Author's notes: this fanfic came about through my desire to write a total A/U (and one with no historical basis, no less… guess who can't be bothered to research? And unlike Ozaki I have no desire to go on about Nazi Germany, the only historical period I could set this in.). The fic is set in the sort of landscape portrayed in the Cathexis video "Zetsuai 20xx"-the buildings less ruinous but the same sort of effect. The kind of technology is contemporary (so no killer robots or cybernetically enhanced crazed nazi vampire lords here) but like the landscape that's slowly falling to bits as well. I'm trying to get a whole kind of "last days of the Third Reich" thing going on with Hirose and Akihito-only time will tell how successful that aim was. I am NOT going to be following the canon with the characters-most of the relationships will have been altered along with some of the characters' pasts. Please bear with me-it gets better later. The title is taken from the first line of the song "Zetsuai 20xx"-my inspiration, however indirectly, for this fanfic.
The view from Koji Nanjo's window was desolate, but it had been for as long as he could remember. His days had always been grey and cheerless, the sun watery in a featureless sky. The nights, by contrast, were brighter than the morning, the scarred landscape thrown into bizarre relief by the moon, which was far more brilliant than the sun could ever hope to be, the snow which usually blanketed the land transformed. It was on nights like those that he longed to leave his insulated world far behind, but the beauty of the night was illusory. That was something that had been reinforced for him since childhood. The beauty of the night was illusory and hid the very real dangers of the world beyond his window.
The war had been going on for at least ninety years. Very few people could remember what it was for anymore, but it seemed that it was being fought more for tradition's sake than anything. The two sides had been in a deadlock for at longer than Koji had been alive, although all attempts at a negotiated peace had fallen through. People seemed to like being at war, and here in the city, despite the rubble in the streets and the burnt-out shells of buildings that could be seen wherever one walked, there had been no real danger for over twenty years. The actual fighting went on elsewhere-here in the capital it was safe, at least while the deadlock continued. He was even safer than most in the city. His family ruled this country-they made the orders and their safety was a matter of national urgency. If the war had through some fluke come anywhere near this city, then he, his immediate family and all the staff and retainers which seemed to be necessary for the family to survive from day to day would have been evacuated to safety.
The youngest of three brothers, Koji had been his father's favourite from an early age, partly through his looks, partly his ability to excel in most things he could be bothered to put his mind to. He had always been a beautiful child, but there was nothing even remotely feminine about him despite the fact that he had pale skin and long, practically white hair. He was tall, attractive and an incurable womaniser, though he did not care for his current so-called girlfriend-a woman in her twenties named Mieko. Besides, Koji was an insatiable womaniser and the sheer number of his casual conquests was frightening. He was by nature wilful and wayward, which should not be accounted too surprising in a young man who had not yet reached his eighteenth birthday-but in Koji these traits seemed not just to be a preserve of his youth, but a deep-seated facet of his character which could only worsen with time.
But status and security are not enough to keep a seventeen-year-old mind satisfied and despite all his advantages Koji felt his life was empty. He felt imprisoned in his family's home, partly due to its tight security, partly due to his being unable to go out alone. Underneath the cold and cynical demeanour he presented to his family, he had a romantic temperament and saw himself as a bird in a gilded cage who longed to fly away and be free.
***
Another cage, but far less ornate and a prison in both the literal and psychological sense of the word. The cell was small, dingy, cramped and uncomfortably cold, most of the space being taken up with a bunk bed on which two young men, or rather a young man and a teenage boy, were sitting. Both wore similar clothing-a light grey uniform of some kind which on closer inspection turned out to be military. Neither looked like soldiers-both were slightly built, could not have been accounted handsome as they were too close to pretty than was good for young men, both were about the same height and had short blonde hair of practically identical shades. The older wore narrow glasses which suited him, although if his companion had tried them on he would have looked very strange indeed. At a casual glance you could have taken them for brothers or even for non-identical twins, but this was a deceit. The pair had no relation to each other save for three months' friendship.
"Yoshiya?" The younger of the pair, perched precariously on the upper of the two bunks, leant over the edge to look at his companion, who had to fight back a giggle despite his irritation at being interrupted.
Yoshiya and Katsumi shouldn't have been there at all. As non-combatants, they should never have been in a situation which would have allowed them to be arrested by the opposite side, but fate had dealt them a bad hand. The pair had been amongst those travelling to a posting on a train which had been forced to travel through enemy-occupied territory (it shouldn't have happened but it had-in the words of the poet, "someone had blundered"), and it was whist there the train had been bombed. A lot of the others had been killed-those who had survived had been taken prisoner. Ironic, as neither really wanted to be fighting at all but had been conscripted into the army.
"Three weeks? That long?" Katsumi asked, a look of bewilderment on his face. "Serious?"
***
In a third location, over four hundred miles away from the ruinous city that Koji Nanjo and his brothers inhabited and ironically enough the place which Yoshiya and Katsumi had been attempting to reach when they were taken prisoner, Takuto Izumi was irritated. Izumi was normally irritated so this was not nearly as big a deal as it at first seemed to be.
He, like Koji, was gazing moodily out of a window, but he had no romantic ideals about the blighted landscape he was surveying. He, like Koji, was just seventeen, tall, dark-haired and unconventionally attractive, but if he had ever had romantic notions about the world they had been killed stone dead shortly after his fifth birthday and the death of the father to whom he had been devoted. Following the traumatic events of his childhood, he had grown into a distant, hostile young man, mistrustful of the world and its inhabitants. He had very little time for other people, refusing to trust anybody.
Izumi was a soldier, a Captain. He had joined the army at fifteen of his own free will and had proved to be very good at it, largely because he didn't care if he lived or died. He had therefore been prepared to undertake dangerous missions that those who had slightly more regard for their own safety would have considered suicidal. People respected him for what he was prepared to do, but very few actually liked him, instead finding him interesting in the same way that a forest fire is interesting-something to watch from a distance, not to get close to.
He had been given a mission only that morning. One of the government officials, Shibuya, had a nephew who had been conscripted and posted to the base he was currently in but had somehow managed to go missing. Izumi had been told to try and find out what had happened to him. Izumi privately thought that if the kid was a conscript he could very easily have tried to desert. Whatever had happened, he was probably dead. Certainly if he hadn't been related to a minister no-one would have given a damn about him. Izumi certainly didn't care what had happened to him, although it had been stressed to him that if the boy had been imprisoned and his connection to their government had been discovered events could get out of control pretty rapidly. Izumi wondered why, if the kid was so important, he'd been conscripted anyway although it had probably been to avoid accusations of favouritism.
So why the hell bother to find him? Izumi had no time to waste on false sentiment and felt no inclination to pretend he was even the remotest bit interested in what happened to one person he had never even met and, from what he had heard of the kid, would probably dislike intensely if they did meet. He saw the war in general terms, not personal ones.
***
"Hirose!"
The young man seated behind the desk, half-hidden by the shadows cast by the setting sun, did not betray any trace of surprise at the sudden invasion of his privacy, nor at the intruder's shouting of his name. Very little truly surprised Hirose Nanjo anymore-he had long since learnt to mask his emotions and so seldom betrayed any emotion at all. There was no time for emotion for a man in his position.
He was thirty-two years old and the leader of a large and powerful nation, making decisions on behalf of his ailing father, the true head of state. His father, though he had been a powerful man in his day, was now frail and old, incapable of performing the duties expected of him in his position as ruler. Whilst to all intents and purposes his father was the true leader of the nation, Hirose was the one who made the decisions and had been doing so since he was twenty-eight.
"Hirose!"
The nation he ruled was considered powerful and aggressive and considered by many to be the place the conflict originated from. Hirose knew different. In reality the country was falling apart. There was no money left for the war effort, the infrastructure was falling apart at the seams, and with every day that passed it grew harder and harder to govern effectively. Already two of the outlying provinces were in outright rebellion-a rebellion which there was no money to quash. But for the good of the nation and the war effort, the country had to be seen to be united. No-one knew for sure how long Hirose would be able to maintain the deception.
"What is it, Akihito?" Hirose looked up from the papers he had been scrutinising prior to signing them to see the familiar figure of his younger brother Akihito, the head of the country's secret police. Even by the standards of the average secret policeman, Akihito was considered ruthless, bloody-minded and petty. The ministers and servants considered him childish and unpredictable, Koji saw him as a waste of space. Hirose privately felt at least partly responsible for his younger brother's lamentable lack of social skills, having encouraged him to become unhealthily dependent on him from an early age. Akihito was now twenty-four years old and showed no particular inclination to break away from his elder brother-indeed, he seemed to consider him infallible. Anything he heard from his elder brother was like a decree from the Gods. That he heard from others was to be rejected out of hand. Such was the mind of Akihito.
"Koji's gone." Akihito said, a small but satisfied smile playing on his lips. Akihito despised his younger brother, whom he saw as a cuckoo in the family's nest. His father had never had much time for him, but following Koji's arrival at the residence-an illegitimate child, no less! the son of one of his father's many mistresses who had finally tired of playing mother and decided the child should become the responsibility of his father-he had more or less totally ignored his second son, except to criticise him. Koji's arrival was also what had caused Akihito's own mother to abandon him with his father-she had left due to the existence of the child, and had never contacted her son again. Akihito had grown up hating Koji. For his part Koji was indifferent to whether Akihito liked him or not.
The only reason Akihito had bothered to tell Hirose that Koji was gone was that it gave him an excuse to enter his brother's offices uninvited. He had no desire to see Koji found, but he loved Hirose's company above all other and took any opportunity which would allow him to spend time with him.
"Gone?" Hirose cared a little more for Koji, but only due to his rank. Koji was a general in the country's army-a position he held solely by his birth as he had little to no interest in the military-and therefore his safety was a matter of importance. Personally Hirose saw his brother in much the same way Akihito did.
"Yes… he's gone." Akihito smiled again, wider, this time showing his teeth. Akihito's smile was raw, childish, crazy, and had very little to do with happiness.
***
Eri Ijima was, in the eyes of her colleagues, probably the world's worst spy.
No-one knew quite why Eri was a spy at all. She had been recruited solely for her looks, it seemed, in the hope that she would make a good honey trap. To be fair to Eri, she was good-looking-some would have called her beautiful for she was delicate and thin with long blonde hair and wide blue eyes-but that was as far as it went. It had been discovered after her engagement that her intelligence was minimal. She had a head full of air and an inability to grasp the simplest of concepts-like the need for discretion. But she, like Katsumi Shibuya, had a relative who worked with their country's president and therefore she kept her job-despite the fact that she had no talent for it. Eri had wanted to be a spy and, thanks to her father, a spy she remained.
Eri was stupid but her boyfriend Kunihide loved her. No-one knew why he was so devoted to Eri for he was an attractive young man and could certainly have picked and chosen as far as women were concerned. But he had chosen Eri. Kunihide was devoted to Eri and had loved her for many years, a fact which the young woman seemed singularly unaware of. The full extent of Eri's stupidity had become apparent when she saw a photograph of Koji Nanjo and had fallen madly in love with the beautiful young man, despite the fact that he was cold and ruthless and fought for the other side.
As a spy, Eri had been sent to Koji's country, to the capital. She claimed to be a secretary for one of the government ministers, worked in the crumbling government building and never found any useful information on anything. She had nearly blown her cover several times. She kept a scrapbook of all the pictures of Koji she could find and, alone in her tiny flat, she would watch the news religiously every night in the hope that she would see his face or hear him speak.
Three nights ago, she had been thrilled to discover, whilst at work, that Koji had decided to take a more active part in governance. Maybe, just maybe, she'd finally get to meet him and then… Eri Ijima had sighed deeply and surrendered to her absurd fantasies with very little struggle.
***
Koji had a dream too. It was not a particularly noble dream but it was his dream. He wanted to get away from his family altogether, not because he did not support their ideals, not because he was a pacifist or a humanitarian (far from it). It was because he didn't care. He didn't care if his family was killed in the fighting, he didn't care if Hirose respected him or not, it didn't matter in the slightest if Akihito despised him. He had left their control.
He had gone, but he hadn't told his brothers where or why. His father knew. Koji had told him what he intended to do, and his father had agreed to the idea. Koji relished the thought of taking control. He was seventeen, he was ambitious, he was as ruthless as Akihito and as resourceful as Hirose. Every inch the politician. He was beautiful, well-connected and talented. He was sure of his own ability to dominate his own land, and the land against whom he was fighting.
He had not gone for good-just for long enough to make arrangements. He wasn't content to spend the whole of his life in Hirose's shadow. He had waited long enough. He was impatient-he wanted to rule, he felt sure that he would be able to turn the country's fortunes around. He would take over the country, take over the war effort. Koji knew the country was in a state and he blamed it solely on his father and brother.
For Koji, "family loyalty" was just a pair of words. His family had not got where they were today by playing fair or upholding all the rules. They had been ruthless in their day, but somewhere along the line, or so it seemed to Koji, they had lost their drive and the country had likewise lost its way. Hirose appeared to be following his fathers path, but that way could only lead to sterility and defeat. His way was better. His way would work.
He had a dream. It was not noble, but it was his.