FicWad

Alright, just to make this abundantly clear. This involves Yaoi, so if you don;t like that, don;t read this, This is Yohji/Aya, if you're not into that pairing leave (although much much later there will be some Omi/Ken). This contains pretty heavy spoilers for Gluhen and for Kapital as well. If you are one of those who doesn't like Gluhen, this is not the fic for you
Now with that out of the way, this is going to be much longer. Its going to start before and eventually span Gluhen, mostly from episode 6 on.I can't predict length right now. And if this goes well or if I have the time I plan on following this with another, probably shorter fic, and prefacing it with some fics set in Kapital, sort of to tie in to this and the flashbacks I'm going to put in.The warnings and rating apply to just what I've posted so far.
So anyways, I hope you like this, I know theres not much yet, but I'm pretty excited about this. And reviews are much appreciated. Thank you.


Prologue

Black. The headlights pierce through the night, through the smoke rolling from the house, consuming it so nothing…nothing inside will ever be found or identified. Relief washes over me in a cool wave, breath in the choking air that stings my nostrils, smelling of broken wood, burning tatami and gasoline. My eyes water as I collapse down on my knees, watching as she runs, still screaming out into the street, back towards the market. Good. She’ll be safer there. Safer away from this inferno. Then the lights cut across everything, a white swath of light blinding in the reddish haze. They rush forward, eclipsing the world. A single scream splits the night, drowning out the thud of her silent body, thrown in a heap in the road. My voice rips out terrible, staring at the mass of cloth twitching in the road, covered in dirt and grime. She smiles, ripping her skin apart with it. Sick, I glance up, feeling my head jerk, my skin singe with the heat around me. I need to see their face, know what a person capable of this looks like. Glaring, I try to catch their eye, try to draw their attention. I can see a silhouette, a black shadow flush against the glass of the window. I scream again, still immobile, still staring. The head turns, a cold grimace is shot back at me, bile rises in my throat as I watch the car recede, my two images superimposed on the burnished glass.
I jerk awake, breathing hard and covered in sweat. Fuck, I grimace as I throw the sheets off me. A year. Its been a whole year since Aya woke up, since I was able to switch the drain of my bank accounts from the hospital to a university. A whole year since I’ve gotten what I was waiting for, only to have it thrown back in my face, nothing changes. The dream is just more of that. My hand flies up to massage my temple. It doesn’t scare me anymore, wake me up with wrenching terror. I don’t believe that I’m reliving anything. Faded, less immediate, its only worse. Killing is no longer about vengeance, its only a sickening inevitability, the repetitive motion that drives me on further, deeper.
Once, I would have been pleased to be separate from the rest of men, to be set apart like every morbid protagonist or restless cynical hero I admired through books, learning from Camus and Rand, thinkers like Nietzsche, that the different man is invariably the higher one. That the man who takes himself apart, that can endure all manners of hell, all manifestations of the absurd and horrible in himself is god. Perhaps that’s why revenge seemed easier than mourning. There seems to be something poetic in dowsing yourself in blood, in bitterness and guilt and self-revilement. Youth ascribes great powers to the tragic, somewhere I have lost my youth, since murder no longer seems to be profound once its executed. Contrary to the whole of literature, of Raskolnikovs and Prometheus’ in all their forms, there is no redemption and no renewal for the corrupted mind.
In every story, there is some sort of change following the anticipated act.
Moments like these, when my actions are thrown back at me, are the only things left to remind me of my guilt, that by acting as I have I’ve proved nothing, saved nothing. Changed nothing. One could put the romantic hope of morbidity into my actions, that every strike of the blade will kill me with my victim.
That would be right, but its not a wrenching pain, its an inexorable numbness, a terrible cold spreading through me until murder itself is mundane and expected, the faces before my eyes just a nauseous reverie, a ritual before I sleep. I can smile and pull a serene gaze, claim whatever wisdom is granted by this sort of life only because I have accepted this. I know there is to be no liberation, no joyful return to the world. If I was to find my way out, what other skills do I have? I’ve forgotten. I could not live that way, not so numb, never believe in the tenuous happiness that world offers.
I have spent so long in this plane of extremities, of dire situations, of dangerous moments and a perpetual weight and consequence of all my actions, that I could not stomach the mindless ease of that existence.
When I was younger, I would have admired this profusely and taken pride in the passion evident in every action, the undeniable fact that I am made alive for this moment, every moment, every bitter recognition and plunge into nostalgia or accusation. Now that I have felt it, I can no longer claim any ideals. There is no genius in the grotesque, the abhorrent, no matter that the rest is unremittingly unsatisfying.
I would have thought then that this would render me somehow incapable of weakness. I am now the weakest of men, given to every indulgence of guilt, of fleeting desire, of vindictive pettiness, and quick righteousness. There are moments I allow myself to revel in slaughter, and moments I feel alive because I have saved a potential victim, prevented an atrocity through my own. I gave up my last strength, my last trace of inhumanity, or its façade, by a remorseless belief in love, which will lose me nothing but honesty.
Even if Aya’s alive and free, I cannot recover from the taint I took on in her name, nor can I purge the stain I left on it from my use. That’s why I keep it really. Her name is glued to my body with blood. Its sickening to think like this, knowing how cheap it sounds, how stale it is on my tongue and in my mind from years of repetition. It’s not like I’m at risk to forget, this guilt is the only impetus I have left.
Rolling my neck, I grimace, my hair is stuck to my back, thick and itchy with sweat. Groaning, I sit up to peel it off. The sheets are cold.
He must be outside again.
Pulling on a robe I step out onto the balcony, pulling the glass door aside. Out here, it is hotter than even in my dream, the air radiating from everything in humid waves. The night seems slick, coated with a damp sheen, the pavement below the balcony gleaming with an inky and industrial sweat, swamped with neon lights like stars, glowing with an insatiable heat. It hurts my eyes just to look down at it.
Smoke curls out from his hand in to the sky. His wrist hangs slack over his knee, letting the ash drop down into the distant street. He’s not even smoking the cigarette; just letting it burn as his legs dangle. His eyes are closed, the skin around them sallow and ringed with bruises. His skin glows with exhaustion. He doesn’t look up when I throw the door shut. His bare arms are sheathed in sweat. He cradles his head in one palm.
It is a posture I‘ve seen over and over. Tomorrow he will wake up and snarl for coffee, laugh over the dark rings beneath his eyes, his pale and broken skin, the pain in his back from sitting on the banister. He will watch me with hollow eyes and force a smile and bitch about how quickly he wastes cigarettes. And tomorrow, or a few nights later, he will sit here again, under the moon to relive his breaking point alone.
I wonder if I used to look like this, locked in a blur of ordered killings and sterilized hospital visits, sitting by a bed like you would at a grave. And then, a mire of recrimination to keep me sane at night, and pieced together. Guilt served as a thread to pull everything together into one cohesive hell to be endured.
I don’t believe I’ve somehow been redeemed.
I know I can never lose the shape murder has granted me.
There is a freedom in it, which is just another thing to atone for. Once, I would have said we are chained by these actions, that we do not deserve any measure of relief and kept myself focused towards feeling the most pain, the most immediate punishment for all I have forced myself to become. I still don’t believe I deserve anything, but figure this prolonged guilt, the taste of bitterness, and the twinge that accompanies every moment of joy I have, is just as painful.
Inexplicably, I feel free. As tainted as I am, there is nothing I could have wanted from that other world.
Maybe its only that I know she’s alive that I can move forward to more blood, fresh and somehow more muted guilt. That these deaths, like every death before, protect her. I sacrifice “dark beasts” to her life. Maybe its lighter now because she uses it and the sacrifice doesn’t have the time to build up on me.
The acts are freeing because they have a purpose. I am free because there is always a potential end, a way to slip and vanish, cut the cord. My freedom lies in the fact that I do not have to endure, I could just forget to block some blow. It is disgusting that I could prefer this. Not so long ago, I never would have admitted this to myself. How could anyone prefer this to normal life? I was promised something, a relief I don’t deserve.
He tenses every time he finishes the motion in his mind. His eyes clench and his lips tighten into an invisible line each time he relives those words thrown back at him.
I wonder if he ever wishes he had the good luck to be Masafumi. At least he didn’t feel guilt for his crimes.
Shivering as I feel the sweat dry on my neck, I move closer to him, keeping my step quiet so as not to surprise him.
He hears anyways.
“Aya, are you still guilty?”
I stare at him. He’s never spoken to me during these spells.
“After all your self-torment, since she‘s woken up, does that change it?”
I close my eyes too. Somehow it makes it easier to answer the question if I feel alone.
“Does that release the guilt?”
I stop, stiffening at the words. I can hear my voice drop, roughen. I can pretend serenity, a still surface covers chaos the best.
“No, no matter what purpose it has, death dealt is still death dealt. No matter what ideals I claimed, or creeds I recited, or hopes I held for salvation, I was no better than Takatori. Am no better. I‘m worse because I couldn‘t even face what it was I was doing, I had to hide behind something” Someone, my mind supplies. “There is no act that can restore anything or save anyone, that act, in its attempt, changes everything.”
He sighs, leaning back to look at me. He smiles, a loose grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. He drops it as I step closer, taking the cigarette from his hand. He watches as I flick it over the railing, as it falls, a smoldering red dot in the sea of black. A few seconds and it merges with the neon, just another small flame trying to supplant the stars. Looking up, you won’t see any to displace anyways. Yohji reaches out, hesitantly, to take my hand, throwing one leg over the railing and back onto the balcony with me. His skin is cool and smooth, unconsciously I start to trace the back of his hand with my fingers. He snakes the other hand up to run it through my hair, still damp and tangled from my nightmare, and exhales, a rakish leer distorting his features and fading almost instantly. He stares into my eyes, making me afraid to blink. His are dark, something is fractured in them that had never been before, the thing that made him tease easily and honestly, the thing that put the trill into his laughter, the lightness in everything he did. Now all that’s left is a strange seriousness about him. I wonder if he can tell when he looks at himself. He hides it in sarcasm, in a carelessness that is not the same as lightheartedness. I pretend I can’t tell the difference. Thinking I can’t tell makes him happy, relieves him somehow. I trace my free fingers around his chin and pull it close, letting those green eyes swim towards me.
I’m not fool enough to think I can redeem him.
Pressing into his lips, I pull him up, back inside where the heat isn’t so damp, so pervasive. Sweat locks our skin together, sticking us to sheets, hair, everything. His brushes against my nose, and gets caught between our lips as we pull closer. Mine is plastered to my back, and soon enough his is rolled up around us, increasing the heat of our bodies. Somehow the heat isn’t oppressive like it is outside. Holding me close, arms wrapped about my waist, he leans back, smiling down at me.
This time, the smile reaches his eyes.
It scares me that it will be faded tomorrow.