FicWad

Author's Note: Yes, it's been awhile. Shit has effectively hit the fan. I will express a hope at putting another one up soon, really soon, and having the whole thing done before mid-January. Hell, if nothing gets in the way, maybe I'll be able to pull the last two chapters out by New Years. Peace.

Even weeks later, Koua rises before me, its charred, smoking remains cutting a still figure into the night. My face burns with its lingering heat, the smoldering of wood and bodies, hands still bleached against its distant fire, somehow so suffocating from where I stood- watching it and grasping for my absent blade. I stared it down, sullen and monstrous and absurd, until the sun came up and it was nothing but a smear against the ground, a black hulk of ash attracting oblivious crowds, outsiders of our derangement, murmuring with all their ignorance. They carried with them the same fearful attraction I had, and all the sickness of compulsion that returned me there at all. My actions were essentially hopeless, the shiftlessness of someone who has relinquished any right to return. For a moment, I could even believe in Adam and Eve, and the Fall. It is vanity again that leaves us to ourselves.
It was no dream, no phantasm or delirium. It struck me as I stood, waiting for some inexplicable affirmation of my release, that I could return, and wait with him instead.
The impossibility of it was almost serene, a clear unhesitant realization of what is left to do. Sealing me in.
My eyes blistering with unwelcome sunlight, I dragged myself back along the highway, limbs heavy and sick with exhaustion, and stumbled finally into the first hotel I found. It was nothing: a small, brick-faced building with Western architecture, all gables and painted shutters. My glare and bleeding body insured me a room without forcing me to give my name, a white-lipped girl passing the key across the desk with a shaking hand.
The room was enough- it had a bed, an adjoining bathroom, heavy curtains, and a computer bay, equipped with internet cables and a laptop I requested coolly from the nervous girl at the front desk.
Shucking my stiff clothes off, I limped into the shower, and standing under the stream of scalding water, I watched my skin redden, waiting until the water listed into an unbearable coldness before turning the tap off and sliding down onto the wet tile, my head pressing against the cold wall.
For the first time in as long as I could clearly remember, I slept dreamlessly.
Waking a few hours later in a shivering heap of bruised limbs, I let numbness overtake me. Assessing my wounds, I found nothing life-threatening, or even that severe apart from a few swathes of burnt flesh along my arms and what felt like a cracked rib.
I completely ignored the circled of raised flesh around my neck, running my fingers across it as I dressed, leaving it stinging from the shower, and unbandaged.
One could say that I’d finally shaken off an unwelcome yoke, removed myself from the bondage that had held me so long. Running my fingers over the cut, feeling along the delicate scabs, it feels almost as if such a yoke could never have been there.
I felt estranged, exiled even from everything I had ever had. That everything had been purged, all of its hopes and promises rendered null, leaving me washed out, alone with the singular remains of guilt to remind me.
What shit.
_________________________________________

It was simple enough to leave. The air was just as cool as the day before, the sky as gray, the chatter of the people in the streets just as strange to me, with a sort of disquiet to it that belied the absence of some expected noise. Footsteps or the very rending of the earth around me, screams I swore echoed in the hours when I almost let my exhaustion overtake me. No landmarks overtook me.
As I pulled away, settling into my rented car, I let my eyes pause over the cresting white block of the hospital’s roof, and the green mire of blank hills that surrounded it, now void of any buildings to break the starkness of the image.
Grimacing, I tightened my hands around the steering wheel, my vision narrowing to focus on the road ahead of me, what little there was to the tarry mass of unkempt country thoroughfare. Constantly waiting for something to overtake me- it became glaring despite my furious attempts to avoid the realization, that I had taken no notice of the years that passed me by with events shoved off in favor of hope.
The Greeks held that that last was the worst of all evils, why it remained in the bottom of Pandora’s jar.
There was little enough reason left to deny it.
____________________________________

It was stupid to return to Tokyo, but there was nowhere else I could have gone to ensure I put everything I had to into motion so quickly, despite the risk of detection. Carefully, I checked into a secluded hotel on the edge of the city, using a card associated with a set of accounts I’d been careful to hide from Tsukiyono.
It was simple enough to access the news reports of Koua from their anonymous server. Apparently, there had been some sort of fire due to an electrical problem. It’s a good enough story, one Kritiker knows well enough carries little interest and won’t warrant any deeper investigation. It lists only fifty casualties, including the disappearance of several faculty members. I wondered how many people have been declared dead twice. It makes no difference, my name is irrelevant to the preparations I had to make.
Paranoid, I waited until that night to check the balances in those accounts, stunned almost at the massive amount left in them, far more than I would have expected had been deposited the day before the mission, presumably in anticipation of its completion.
Numb, I transferred the mess of funds into a different account, one whose existence is only known to myself, and Manx, who ensures that the money makes it to where it is needed. I wonder if Aya has bothered yet to question the wealth available to her, or if she is content enough with the farcical explanation that it is a stipend from the Witness Protection Program she is supposedly a part of.
Its almost an obscene amount of money to leave to someone. Numbly, I opened another account and shifted half of it there. I wonder how surprised Tsukiyono will be to find the account so diminished when he checks on it.
If I disappear and do not return within a week, orders have been left to give the entire sum to Aya-chan. This second account will remain untouched.
I bite my lip as I type the name of the account holder into the necessary box. Yohji Kudoh, or what will be left to collect it.
_____________________________________

Days pass. I furtively make arrangements, purchasing tickets for flights, checking and double-checking my assumed persona. It will not matter what happens once I arrive in New York, only that I have left. Henry Miller stated again and again in his writing that it was a good place to get lost, and it is one of few cities where I have not heard of any important Kritiker branches. I have left to me a forged I.D. and passport, a debit card attached to an account with spare funds, and what clothes I was forced to buy upon returning to Tokyo, unable to bear another second of that stiff, bloodied cloth scraping against my skin, or the dull gleam of the leather where it opened in reams of split fabric. I dumped them in an alley, leaving Yohji’s wallet securely tucked into a pocket of the ruined trench coat.
Nothing could have been easier. I’m as light as air, reeling above the ground through a fog that hasn’t reached it yet.
I glare down at my hands, pale and smoothly blank. I’ve been left intact and I don’t give a damn.
After those preparations have been made I have little to do but sit silently in my hotel room, waiting for the days to pass so I can leave and to check the internet for any new reports on the ‘fire’ at Koua.
After two days, no paper mentioned the name at all, having moved on to more important matters, such as Takatori Mamoru’s imminent candidacy for the House of Representatives in the Diet.
I suppose that at least I do not have to worry that he will find the new account, or discover my departure.
It is strange, even now I am looking over my shoulder, expecting someone to come hauling me back to inescapable Weiss.
________________________________

The view from my hotel window is unimpressive at best- a sweep of the city’s industrial areas with a hint of a red-light district at its edges. I lean against the glass, drifting in a state of half consciousness. I have not allowed myself sleep since arriving in Tokyo, uncertain of exactly what I hope to avoid by doing so.
A rapping at the door jerks me fully awake again. I glare at the door silently. If its housekeeping, they can either find a way to get through the deadbolt or come back later. I’m in no mood for their irritatingly unwarranted conversational attempts or bustling intrusive presence.
“Damn it Fujimiya, I know you’re in there! Open the fucking door!”
I stiffen, willing the unwelcome visitor to leave, to assume I’m out, anything, as long as the beating on my door ceases and the visitor departs. Mentally, I curse myself at having chosen someplace found so easily.
“Aya, I’m not going to leave. I’ll stand here and pound at the door until you let me in.”
True to his word, he begins banging on the door, so loud it sets my teeth on edge.
Grudgingly I rise, unlocking the door and pulling him inside with one quick gesture, scanning the hall for anyone that may have overheard.
Ken tenses, flexing his fist as if he is refraining from hitting me. Not that I’d imagine it’d have much impact, the man looks as if he belongs in a hospital. Nearly every uncovered piece of skin is wrapped in bandages, and his face shows traces of burns. One ankle is bound in a cast, and his knuckles are scabbed over, nice accompaniments to the stitches that are certainly in place along his abdomen, where I cut him stabbing Tsujii’s god-child. He scowls.
“I’m not leaving until you explain some things first.”
Quieter.
“Omi has been sick worrying about you.”
A note of accusation. I shrug, turning away from him to stare through the window again.
“Aya!”
“Hn.”
“Why the hell did you just disappear like that? We thought you were just going back to find Yohji- but then.”
Ken sighs, a long intake of air punctuated by his clutching around his ribs
“We thought you were dead- Aya, is Yohji-”
He stops suddenly, letting the room lapse back into silence.
“How did you find me?”
My voice is low, raspy from disuse and untreated smoke damage.
“It doesn’t matter, Aya I want to know-”
Turning around, I look him in the eyes again, watching as his features harden and he shudders, a strange taste of bitterness in his expression. It is something that seems foreign, and all at once too familiar, terrible in the sense of something one has long expected.
Abruptly:
“Omi did it. You really should have expected it.”
Less than a shock, but still disgusting. Surreptitiously, I glance around the room, assessing how long it would take for me to gather everything up.
“Aya-”
Ken’s voice comes quiet, the anger giving way to a nervous whisper.
“Aya, you have to let us know.”
I glare at him. Ken- who so wanted to be free, but goes limping back at the first sign of it, shielding his eyes and clinging to the bonds he so claimed to abhor.
Can’t he give Yohji this? I wince as my nails bite into my palm, fingertips slipping around in the small weal of blood. Ken waits, folding his arms expectantly. His body is taut with pain, his desperation clear in what he must be suffering just by standing. Let him. I was able to give Yohji what Ken should have taken for himself, that which we always held to be so impossible, whether by pathos or obligation or fear- or the horrible realization of how beholden, how dependent, we were on that which we cursed so readily: the freedom of complete separation.
“The place for me is with all of you.”
Ken’s voice takes on a furtive edge again, rushing around me, warped and fused to echoes of other words, more welcome words and more devastating ones.
“No matter what happened Aya, all of us are here for you. Omi can protect you, whatever you want. You could even lead Weiss again, I know Omi’s already got Rex researching potential recruits. We just need to know what you want.”
I shudder with revulsion, my skin crawling at potential blood, at the sick slickness of being bound in presumed innocence, or nobility.
“I am……weiss.”
Blank. What neither crime nor nobility has touched. I imagine Yohji sprawled in a hospital bed, eyes twitching in tandem with the fluids forced through his veins for sustenance. Like Aya- cruelly asleep.
I don’t realize I’ve closed my eyes until I feel Ken’s hand settle on my shoulder. His voice chokes in my ear.
“Aya- I’m sorry.”
The words settle over me with a strange finality that closes my throat and sets my skin tingling with an awful anxiety. Tense, I wait until Ken moves his hand, stepping back with a closed look on his face.
“Please leave.”
“Is there anything I can-”
“Leave.”
I wait until the door slams behind him before letting my eyes drift closed again, exhaustion wearing through me, leaving me dizzy, staring blind at the back of my eyes and the colors that reside there. My stomach writhes, nauseous, forcing bile up the back of my throat with a stinging heat. I let my body force me to the floor, huddled, my knees pressed desperately into my chest as my breath releases in one long sob, and I collapse into a reluctant darkness.
________________________________________

The sun wavers in the distance, pale and overly bright in a haze of soft colors. The sky streaks in shades of orange, red, blue that all merge into a distant gray, bearing down over a strangely pastoral landscape. Grass tufts up around my ankles, shivering in a silent breeze that wraps around my skin, movements of air imbuing an eerie sense of calm. There is something too thin about the sky, something facilely disturbing about the grass, making it less than vivid even as it scratches at my legs.
“It’s so peaceful.” A voice curls through the breeze, soft and too high, and still strangely welcome. The breeze ruffles through Omi’s hair.
“I wish it could last forever.” My limbs are made heavy to the rhythm of his voice, skin inexplicably rankling at the words. A sense of horror made itself clear through the landscape at the unnaturalness of that prospect. Another voice rises from that sense, pressing itself against me with tangibly relentless force, pressing into my temples with a hard denial.
“It won’t last for long……when the sun sets, the reality of everything will catch up to us. We can’t escape, not until the end. Until we die. And then we still are forever-”
“Hey.”
Ken’s voice grates up through the grasses, soft and frantic. Yohji’s laughter is the sound of the sky as it begins to dissolve.
“Sorry.”
Looking over, his skin, and Omi’s, is on fire, burning off everything, leaving them brilliantly white, radiating a strange and nearly unbearable heat that rubs hard against my face. Ken is flushed next to them, shredding strings of grass in his hands.
“That’s right.”
Omi’s voice continues, slamming hard against my throat and eyes, ears ringing over his words, sharp barks of simple sound. There is something terribly hollow about it, a sharp edge to the words, a wounded feeling of deceptive hope. My head aches with the stench of flowers.
“….to places we’ve never seen and people we’ve never met. And on nice days like this we could close the shop and-”
Yohji mutters, the sense of his voice brushing under Omi’s, somehow at once more immediate and more vacant. Ken laughs. It seems faintly obscene, as if something has gone forgotten for that laughter.
“Hey, Aya-kun, will you go too?”
Omi’s voice rises from that laugh, more solid and obstructing than before.
“Aya-kun, let’s all go together.”
There is something terrible about it, my eyes swallowed by the distance and strange weight of their voices.
I wake slowly, my limbs stiff from having passed out on the floor. The room is dark, compellingly calm, and I shift to a sitting position, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
“We can’t escape, not until the end. Until we die and then we are still forever-”
Words from the dream ooze back at me, a torpid and overbearing presence beneath my skin, gnawing at bones and muscles.
Forever what? It’s an empty question, born of my lethargy. My skin glows almost as white as theirs did in the scraps of moonlight spreading through the window. The light is almost dusty, clinging around torpid limbs, my head aching with exhaustion.
Carefully, testing my rigid legs, I stand, and make my way over to the computer. Its damnable white light strikes at my eyes, leaving my vision spotted with streaks of purple, glaring swathes of neon obscuring the screen.
It takes less than five minutes to shift the date of my departure, changing the seat on a flight leaving four days from now, at dawn, to one leaving early tomorrow afternoon.
I don’t understand why I planned on waiting so long to leave. That sort of hesitation is absurd. I have no room left for respite or torpid hope.
I don’t even bother to switch the computer off, collecting my small pile of papers and clothing and bundling them into a bag by the door. I’m so tired, even the small thing feels heavy in my hands, a burden that is too much to stand.
Begrudgingly conceding to my body, I curl up on the covers of the bed, and let exhaustion decide for me.
______________________________________

“We are still forever-”
The voice is broken by the sound of my footsteps. Boots clacking across a dark sea of asphalt, stretching on into an unseen and equally blackened horizon. Each step rings out like a gunshot, thick and sickening as it reaches my body again- a refraction of terrible sound. My vision darts around furtively, shifting about dizzyingly, almost as if it were something separate from myself. It is a strange festering swarm of black, granted a confusing depth by the voice echoing within it.
“Until we die. And then we are still forever-”
My arm jerks out, seeking to strangle the unseen producer of those words, that awful sound that catches along my skin in the dark.
“Still forever-”
My throat itches to scream, my head aches with pent up and fathomless yells- a feral response to something I cannot bear. A sort of protest.
My eyes flinch closed suddenly, protectively as light floods before me. A strange narrow triangle of light draws me on, leaking through the gap between my eyelids. It is a beautiful pain. Staggering forward, I let the light wrench my eyes open again, so that I may see its source.
The light ebbs from careful skin, a white soft nape brushed by dark hair. Her scalp gleams in the light, her flesh pulses with the same rhythm as her breath. My heart skips a beat, almost choking me with relief.
As I step forward she whips around, her hair a mass of the night cutting through her skin. Her eyes narrow at me, her mouth going slack and strange. As she rises, something drops from her hand- a long shadow meeting the ground with a terrible wet thud.
The light from her ankle reveals its features. Asami’s limp jaw hangs open, her eyes rolled back into her head. Her pallid skin seems to absorb the light flooding from my sister, growing brighter and more terrible with each breath I take.
I can see it spread to my own fingers, and as it does, it paralyzes me.
Tears curl down Aya-chan’s face as she moves closer. Each footstep crunches, snaps, squishes, leaving dark marks up her calves. Her movement reveals stiff bodies. They seem bleached under her movement. The light grows harsher as she steps over them towards me.
“Forever white.”
The words snap out through her skin almost. Up close, I can see ridges of blood marking her limbs, smears of red covering her face and hands.
I try to speak, my throat cracking with the pressure. Blood trails cool down my lip as her eyes spread into a wide, horrified look as she turns, stumbling over the bodies as she runs. Leaving me immersed in absolute darkness.
The sun is near blinding when I wake up, gushing through the window in long, aching strings of light. My head throbs with it, aching as I sit up and all the blood flows down my spine.
The room is unnervingly clean, complete with fresh towels and dusted services. Slightly panicked, I glance at the clock, and sigh in relief when I notice that its only ten.
Refusing to measure any thoughts, I bolt out of bed, rushing into a relatively cold shower and pulling on the only set of clothes not already packed. I pause a moment to glance in the mirror, shrugging at the bags under my eyes and the exhausted tone of my skin.
It does not matter. It seems as if everything ends with the moment my foot leaves Japanese soil, that the whole world will be swallowed up before my eyes, with neither a farewell, nor a pardon to salve the break.
A malaise, an abyss that is as gray and pallid as my skin in the mirror.
Silently, I leave the bathroom; and picking up my bag on the way, leave the hotel. My footsteps echo hollowly down the hallway.
________________________________________

It is in a daze that I watch my hands twist about on the steering wheel, watch the streaking colors of traffic and the glaring signs, almost suffocating even in the daytime.
The air whistles in the open window, brushing against my face and leaving my skin on edge, tingling in the faint chill. My knuckles are white, and they twitch time I have to turn, my hands clenching tight around the plastic wheel.
It is as if I am seeing everything through a fog, made somehow distant and distinct from it by leaving.
The only way I can measure my existence is by the tight presence of my heart in my chest. A somewhat terrible tremulous presence, biting at me with an exhausted thrill.
I carefully pull the car into an alley, parking it far enough back that it could not be seen from the street at all.
This time of day, the streets are crowded with housewives, the elderly, and businessmen taking a walk on their lunch break. I glance at a clock in a store window, numbly registering that I have merely an hour before I have to be at the airport.
Walking around, I notice the street, lingering at corners, taking special note of the edifices of buildings- as I never did before. There is a strange realization in leave-taking, of the whole the tone is leaving behind, that creates a terrible sense of self. I am not here, I will not be here later and I am no part of this.
The scent of flowers streams heavily down the street- heavy to my senses at least, a vast perfume that strikes me between nausea and elation.
The store is nearly empty, the glass doors open and sparkling in the sun, a thousand times cleaner than when we last left them. There is no shouting crowd of schoolgirls pressing at the windows, pawing the displays with overeager hands. They would come later anyhow, or perhaps no longer come at all.
Through the window I can see a few lingering women gathering flowers, a couple of workers in green aprons, and the old woman nodding off near the cash register. A cat skulks out onto the sidewalk, batting aimlessly at the air. It fixes me with a stare as I step closer, with an odd reluctance.
The cat is not one I recognize, though perhaps I should. I slip by it through the door.
The place washes over me strangely, with an unwelcome fondness. A host of memories threatens me from every corner, every petal and arc of light reflected from the windows. I close my eyes against them, digging my nails into my palms as a distraction.
“Would you like something young man?”
I do not realize I was trembling until I open my eyes. Momoe-san smiles at me, giving me a slow careful wink, like one of the cats.
“Here. Take this.”
Reaching into a bucket, she pulls out a long red rose, pressing it into my hand. I smile at the slight scraping of the thorns as she closes my fingers around the stem.
“It suits you.”
The smile drops. Just another reminder.
Nodding, I push my way out of the shop, holding the rose carefully in my hand. Blindly I push across the street, running between the eternally stock-stilled cars and huddle in a phone booth. My breath catches. I watch over the street as Aya steps out of the back room carrying some empty pot or another. I can hardly make her out at all.
Slowly, carefully, I dial in the number. As it rings, I force my breath to slow until it is inaudible.
“Hello? This is the Koneko No Sumo Ie. Have you called to order flowers?”
Her voice is light and lilting. There is no trace of the horror that was so present in the dream.
Regardless, the thought of it itches along my skin, forcing me to remain silent and stunned at her voice.
My mouth goes dry with the thought of circles of blood coiled like rust along glowing skin, of purity defiled- of rot I know is a lethargic giving in to my more dramatic tendencies and my odd penchant for wallowing in guilt.
“Hello?”
What can I say to her? Do you regret the choices I have given to you? Do you believe that I died?
It is four years since I last remember hearing her voice, and her first words are directed towards a stranger. Unconsciously I feel the stud in my earlobe, missing the long dangling remnant of her that I hope she has kept for me as I once did for her.
Her voice is hesitant, uncertain and oddly hopeful. One wouldn’t imagine that such an emotion could be conveyed as a quality of a voice.
“Brother?”
I tense, biting my lip to avoid making my shock clear.
“It’s you isn’t it? You’re the one who did all this for me right?”
I swallow, trying to force my breath down.
“Brother? It’s me, Aya! Please say something!”
Her voice takes on a wild tinge, a strange begging lilt to it.
The street in front of me blurs as I close my eyes.
“Ran- I waited for this.”
Two children tiptoeing into the water, one dragging the other by the arm. Even from way back, you could see the marks her fingers made on my sunburnt skin, and the wide gleam of her mouth laughing.
I never could deny her anything, nor wanted to.
“Aya.”
The word is a long rush of air from my lungs, a self-identification in so many ways. It is within me because you are within me, and it is I, because I lived everything for you.
Now, leaving her, it is a way to give the name back again, so it is fully hers.
“Are you happy?”
My last gift to her that I’ll watch her receive.
“Yes. I am.”
Her voice is solemn, almost too calm for the occasion. She doesn’t call me anything. It’s fitting. I don’t want a name anymore. I can no longer let myself be tied to anything.
“Is that so…..”
I let my voice trail off into the click of the phone. Through the window I can see as Aya slaps at the table, frustrated. She runs outside, head darting about for where I am.
By the time she reaches the phone book I am already standing by the car, watching over my shoulder as she presses the petals to her cheek too hard, letting them drift to the ground.
___________________________________

The drive to the airport is colorless, as if I’m driving through mist. Even the other cars seem to vanish around me.
It seems Japan has already taken leave of me. I do not mind, even if I bite my lip as I park the rental car in front of the terminal.
Since it does not have my name attached to it, there is no reason not to abandon it. I have no time for formalities anymore.
Once inside the airport, it is a matter of moments before I am flush with the crowd, my body mingled with thousands of other travelers, all seat in hand. I clutch my one bag tightly, grasping onto it as if my whole existence depended on my retaining of such property.
In a manner of speaking, I suppose it must.
It almost amazes me.
____________________________________

I make it to the gate with only ten minutes to spare, shifting myself close enough to the line that I will be herded on with the rest of the passengers. Idly, I wonder how many of them will be getting off at the interim stop in Honolulu.
Glancing around, I decide a good deal of them are, certainly this group standing next to me in their preemptively floral shirts and screaming children.
I shy away as they begin snapping pictures of the airport. I don’t want to be kept in any of their inane memories.
Closing my eyes, I am careful not to conjure any images of my own.
It is a dead feeling, that somehow I have buried them in that flash of gray and smoke, piles of ash. Perhaps it is miraculous, or terrible, that I managed to preserve them so long after Koua burned. After I let it burn everything around me.
There was something mindless in the act.
My eyes jerk open as someone brushes against my shoulder. Surprised, I glance around, trying to readjust to the bright light of the airport terminal and the nearby flashes of the tourists’ camera.
Ken stands next to me, his bandages obscured by a long jacket. His mouth opens at the same time that the speaker blares out a mechanical order.
“Now boarding flight number……”
Unconsciously, I let my lips twist into a small smile, nodding as I turn away from him.
I can feel his stunned gaze boring into my back even as the plane ascends into the clouds, over the thrashing white crests of the Pacific Ocean.
It fades only as the white gives way to gray, the waves to stark buildings and a haze of smog that collects on the windows of the plane as we land.
It is strange that it is his eyes that stay with me as I rise to get off the plane.
All my passion gone- I let the crowd carry me into J.F.K.