Outstretched the Universe
By Kay
Disclaimer: I don't own Weiss Kreuz… yet. It is only a matter of time. And money. And copyrights. And lawyers. And laundry lint.
Author's Notes: First WK fic, so don't expect much… I'm not entirely sure why it ended up Farfarello/Ken, anyway. Don't hurt me. hides But… enjoy? Yay for dreamy, symbolic and nonsensical storylines!
the beginning
"I can give you everything," the Berserker murmured in his dreams, holding out the blade crusted in blood. It carried a metallic scent and the shattered dreams of innocents everywhere.
In this dream, at that time, Ken wanted to take it. He didn't know why. He didn't dare ask himself the question, even if he wanted the answer.
"What's everything?" is what he asked.
It laughed at him, harshly, teeth pearl-white and of light. "Death."
i.
Sometimes Ken plays soccer in the park when the world is drenched in freezing rain. It is not the smart thing to do; it is not the fever and love for the game that keeps him going, either. Rather, he needs this desperately, the slick slide of the wet grass against his shoes, the fresh scent of earth carrying away the cloying odor of flowers that always clings to his clothes after a long shift.
The strain in his calves, the pumping of his heart in his throat, and the slicing pain in every muscle as he exerts it to its best… he needs that to wipe it all away. And when the mud is dark and thick enough to slather his hands and the black-and-white monotone of the soccer ball, he thinks, just for a moment, that the blood no longer exists. That all the years of suffering and stains on his fingertips are covered, hidden, and erased.
Sometimes to be clean, you can only get dirtier. That is how Ken thinks.
ii.
The days never get any faster. The smooth curve of a potted plant never crumbles under the weight of his sins, and sometimes he thinks its amazing he can handle anything at all without it breaking. In reality, Ken considers when sitting on his bed at night, staring down at the smooth, tan volumes and digits stretched before him in the darkness, in reality he's not very strong. He can break nothing. Not really.
That's what claws are for. That's what weapons and blades are for. To break things. His hands are never quite enough, but without them it would never happen. Which are the tools, then? The weapons or the fingers that hold them? Where does the control begin and end?
In essence, it is his fault.
Guilt. Penance. Grief. Suffering.
Absolving is the tool of innocents.
iii.
He doesn't like to think about Kase. It's more than what it seems—remembering the days when they held arms like brothers, played as if in tune with their every emotion—that is bitterness. But more than that, he hates to think of the hot gush of blood that ran down his gloves when he killed him, how warm it was, how ugly and acidic it had become through years of corruption. It felt just like every other villain's blood throughout the years. It was in no way special.
He hates how he said, "I'm already in Hell."
Because sometimes, when he's laughing with Omi over a bad joke, or clumsily knocking Yohji's coffee off of the countertop, or cautiously looking over Aya's black trench coat for any sign of a wound, he thinks differently. When he's playing soccer with the sun searing on his back, the kids in the park giggling and reaching towards the blue skies, and when the flowers are good and business is normal, and Brazil does well on the newest game, and he's griping at Yohji for leaving his cigarettes on the coffee table again, and the hot chocolate is silky smooth, and his socks are mysteriously clean in the drier, the whole world is a crawl, slow and sweet, achingly perfect, and that is when he thinks, guiltily, that this isn't Hell at all.
He's dead. But he's living through it.
iv.
"Mission complete," Abyssinian says coldly through the receiver. It crackles in static against his ear, but he pays it no attention. Just stares blankly at the object cupped in his gloves, worn and bent at the corners.
"Siberian?" Omi's voice is concerned over the radio connection. He almost nods numbly before realizing the boy can't hear it.
"Coming," he says. He stands up from his crouch over the body, a wallet-sized photo of the security guard and his two children slipping from his fingers. They aren't old enough to understand yet. Neither is he.
v.
He doesn't let on, but he secretly adores Momoe-san's cat. His mother had one similar in color, and now he feeds it scraps and scratches its tail whenever the others aren't looking. He doesn't know why it matters so much to keep it hidden—Yohji will tease him, but move on within a few days—but he keeps it that way.
It looks at him like he's worth the world when it wants petted.
Once, on the anniversary of his fake death, he stood for almost half an hour in the break room of the flower shop. No one else came for him; it didn't matter at this time of day. When the cat slipped in and hopped nimbly onto the table, he looked at it dully. It meowed at him, nudging his hand so it would move. The fingers trembled when they stroked her fur, sluggishly and evenly.
He wanted to hold it and cry bitterly into its fur. So he did.
vi.
Ice cream is the gentlest touch of a lover. Ken licks his way around the strawberry cone eagerly, trying to ignore his sticky fingers. The summer sun is too warm to let the dessert stay for long; it's already slipping down the sugar cone in gooey streaks.
His knees are skinned from hitting the goal post on accident when playing soccer. His feet ache, his neck is drenched in sweat, and the cold ice cream lingers on his tongue for only a fleeting second before it melts.
It is a perfect day. Judging from the bruised purple sinking down over the horizon, it will be a perfect night.
vii.
"Who wants to take this mission?"
Aya immediately straights and takes the offered folder, glancing around at the others with a deadened expression of disinterest. "I'm in." This is natural, of course. This is expected. There should be little reason to ask.
Yohji considers it from the sofa a while longer, the cigarette dangling from his lips almost awkwardly. He thinks about refusing, but time has worn down his protests. Now it is easier to shrug, throw it all off, and just agree to go with the flow. The drawling comebacks disappear with the heavy blur of rain still pattering outside in the streets. Instead he just nods. Many things have changed.
Omi looks to Ken before his own confirmation, though he knows he will give it. The dark-haired youth is slouched against the couch, his legs stretching out in front of him lazily, the mahogany slips of his hair hiding the hollowed set of his eyes. He has not moved at all. "Ken?"
"In," Ken says, but he doesn't know what he's agreeing to. He's spent the last ten minutes staring at the television screen through a shield of absentminded thoughts, thinking almost wistfully that the universe is far, far away from him, out of reach in a twirling globe of madness.
He reaches for the folder as though it will give him answers. But of course, it does not.
viii.
"I will kill you, kitten," the Berserker once hissed in his ear, the cold lines of his fingers hard against Ken's wrist. Pinned under him, struggling to get leverage to lunge his claws straight into Farfarello's chest, he was struck dumb at it.
It was an offer, not a threat.
The madman's golden eye glowed in the shadows, a universe waiting out of reach in a twirling globe of madness, full of answers and lies.
He wanted to destroy it. He wanted to see it. He felt his claws jam straight through the Berserker's arm, however, and they were both lost in blood.
ix.
He brings up the subject with Yohji, who is both ridiculously drunk and willing to lend an ear at the kitchen table. He'll never know why he thought of it, but once he does, it doesn't let go. That is the way of things.
"We have tombstones somewhere," he says in a quiet voice. Yohji peers at him through ragged strands of gold, narrowing his green eyes in confusion and suspicion. To elevate it, he adds, sheepishly, "I mean, the people who have supposedly died. We have to all have graves somewhere, right?"
"Fuckin' morbid thought, Kenken," Yohji tells him. He lights a cigarette, eyes darker than usual. "It doesn't matter, 'nyway."
Ken pauses, his head slumped over his arms on the table, and stares down at the grains of oak on the surface. They look like lifelines. Short, incredibly garish lifelines. "Yeah… I know. I just think it's a little weird."
"Yeah?"
"When we're killed, do we get buried in the graves already made for us? Or do we get new ones?" The idea lunges forward painfully in his mind. It swallows him entirely, fearfully, and he almost can't bare the answer.
"If there's a body left," Yohji says flatly, "it'll probably be burnt."
That is worse. He thinks of flames surrounding him, and his side twitches. The scars rebel at the thought, inside and out.
x.
'You're playing too rough with him,' Schuldich laughs mockingly in his mind during the next mission. 'You're so violent, Kenken.'
'I'm violent!' he snarls, dodging a vicious lunge from Farfarello's blades, trying desperately to hold off his attacks. He manages to get a few slashes with his claws—experience has begun teaching him the way the Irish madman moves, like danger, like death—and it's a dance he's already spinning to.
'He thinks you're serious.' The mind reader pauses, silent. Then, almost warningly, 'And you are.'
Ken thinks it's natural to be serious when your life is on the line. Fighting, killing—you have to be serious if you want to make it out alive. He's not playing games here. He thinks all this back in frustrated anger to Schuldich, who reads it and chuckles sarcastically in his head, and then feels a burn down his arm where Farfarello has managed to shred the skin. It's painful.
It's glorious. He howls and jerks away. The blood is hot down his arm.
But the Berserker is still looking at his face, searching. He smiles, all teeth bared like an animal. It is a terrible and awful thing and he almost smiles back.
xi.
"Jesus, Ken, you're gushing," Yohji curses, and shoves him down so hard on a kitchen chair that he almost hits his head.
"Berserker," he mutters stressfully, brown eyes tired and weary. He'd almost forgotten about the wound. "Again."
The jacket is gently pushed off one shoulder, his shirt rolled up and stained red skin examined by a careful eye. Though Yohji is not usually one to do bandages, he's compliant now, with Aya nursing his own bruises and Omi nearly unconscious in his exhaustion. He's careful with Ken; his fingers probe without being rough, the lines of his fingernails blunt and wonderful compared to the sharp, cutting jagged edges of Farfarello's, which have already delved deep into his sides.
He wraps in it silence. Ken stares at the ceiling, ignoring any pain, and thinks about the light that glows there. He's never seen anyone change the light bulb. It is probably Aya's doing.
He feels rotten. Agonized. Like he's alive, with Yohji's breath against his ear, saying softly, "Time to go to bed, Kenken."
xii.
He sometimes dreams of a room shrouded in souls and the ugly parodies of the world, all danger and gorgeous sin painting the walls blue and red. There is nothing in there but a tiny globe of light in the center, hovering lazily in the air, and the crouched figure of a madman without a true name in the corner.
"What do you believe in?" it asks him.
Ken believes it is not real, but the answer is the rawest form of truth. "I don't know."
"God?"
"No," he says before thinking about it. He doesn't take it back, however; his lips are frozen and wax pads the corners into a fake, empty smile.
A flash of metal, and the voice laughs gently. "Not God? But Hell?"
"I'm already in Hell."
"Wrong. You seek it still." A tilt of the head, a slow considering eye, gold and red in the shadows. "You are still alive."
"I am dead."
"Not yet. But you want to be," the Berserker says, and steps forward. Ken follows him until they are standing directly opposite of each other, a weak, flickering ball of light separating them from being close enough to hear the lowest whisper.
"What do you believe in?" Ken asks mechanically.
The light colors his face with orange and gold, giving it the hue of a human, and Farfarello only laughs until it goes out.
xiii.
The world is sick, twisted, wrong.
He yearns for blood sometimes. It's easy to ignore in the sunny, well-lit flower shop, laughing over blossoms with Omi and Yohji, trading glances with Aya and stepping on tiptoes around his thunderous expression. Playing soccer, speaking to the children's parents as they ruffle his hair like he were part of the family, friendly, warm and affectionate—everything else fades away. Life and sunlight burn away anything else until there's just Ken Hidaka.
With missions, with nightmares, alone in his room at three in the morning and staring at the cracks in the ceiling, there comes the longing. The ugly, skewed desire that tingles in his veins, the recollection of hot, gushing blood flowing between the fragile skin joining his fingers. The drowning of his heartbeat in the scream of static rising in his ears, adrenaline howling in pleasure as it rushed through his body, the heavy, secure sensation of the bugnuks over his wrists…
He wonders, when deadened to all else in the world, alone in the emptiness, whether it would be sweeter to burn his claws. To let them smolder in fire, red-hot and branding, and feel it sizzle as it slices through the skin. If the thought will taste as glorious. The agony. Douse them in fire, the bane of his nightmares and forbearer of his death, to bring others screeching to their knees.
The world is sick, twisted, wrong.
He throws up when he thinks about this. Heaves until there's nothing else in the charred, raw pit of his stomach. Just the fear.
xiv.
It would be miraculous to just leave it all behind. He knows they've all thought about it—just turning away from Weiss and leaving it to the collapse and ruin of all. Let Kritiker fight their own battles. Just let it all go.
It would be so easy. They could create new identities for themselves. They'd been living in the shadows for so long that slipping away would be simple; easier than anything they'd ever done before. Just step on a bus one day with a duffel bag and no destination, leave it all behind, all obligation and responsibility, because in the end no one would miss them, not really. They were dead to the world and family. Dead in all senses. All they had now was each other. That was what they clung to, viciously, desperately.
That is also why they can't leave, though.
He wonders if there will ever be a day when they go into the mission looking at each other, thinking, 'I hope they die today.' And then closes his eyes, squeezing them tight enough to bring spots and flashes of color, to remind himself that even then, he would never, ever be free.
xv.
When cornered, Ken becomes the animal he is named after.
"Get the fuck away from me, you psycho!" Blood is trickling down his side, saturating into the orange fabric of his sweatshirt. For a moment, he mourns the fact that it will take a huge amount of stain-remover to get rid of it, but then the mediocre thought vanishes, dissolves, straight into the black abyss that is normality so far from this abandoned warehouse and its demons playing in the night. Instead he looks at Farfarello with a snarl, trying to twist his features to drown the fear in them. From the smirk he receives in return, it does not work.
"Kitten is trapped," the Berserker murmurs greedily. He rubs his cheek fondly against a silver dagger, golden eye fluttering in primal enjoyment. "In the corner, caught between the Big Bad Wolf and his teeth."
It is nearly literal. Ken can feel the angle of the corner digging into his back. "Yeah, well, my teeth aren't so dull, either," he snaps, holding his bugnuks at ready. The madman only laughs at him.
"Do you think I will kill you?" There is amusement arching up through his voice as it rises to the ceiling. "Do you think I will slaughter you as the lamb for the sacrifice, wandering warrior?"
"Fuck that," Ken growls, baring his teeth viciously. The hunt is in his blood, surging through his arteries, spiraling through his gut and singing in his lust to destroy the man in front of him. This is one time he does not fight it. "I'm not going to be the one leaving here dead tonight, buddy."
"So sure?" And then Farfarello runs the knife down his cheek, slicing effortlessly through the skin cells and membrane, the thin syrupy line of crimson trailing after its flawless mark. His eyes, against his will, are riveted to it in gruesome fascination. "I can give you penance if you desire it."
"By gutting me?"
"Close your eyes, kitten," it says, mocking. "Take a step. And you will see."
xvi.
The snow falls from the heavens and into the cupped palm of Ken's hand. He watches it melt in wonder, holding it close to his nose as though he could see the individual branches of the flake as they dissolved.
"What are you looking at?" Yohji peers around his shoulder, tilting his sunglasses down over his nose to get a good look. He nearly goes cross-eyed trying. "Idiot. I thought it was something interesting."
"I was just thinking…"
"What?"
Ken looks up at the gray skies, his tired eyes softening. "It's kind of beautiful, you know?"
xvii.
Sometimes he looses himself in the guise of the florist. He likes to think that they all do—that sometimes they guiltily tuck all their assassin thoughts away, locked tightly under key in their minds, and pretend that this is their real job. That what they are, and all they are, is a group of attractive florists trying to make their way in the big city.
Omi chatters with his school friends. Yohji flirts mildly with the prettier girls, promising them dates when they reach the acquired age. Aya stands at the counter stiffly, a pencil tucked against his ear from where he absentmindedly put it during the balance check. This is who they are; every morning and night.
And Ken waters the flowers and checks the soil. He moves the pots and schedules the arrangements to be made. He laughs shyly when someone offers to help him out, thinking how wonderfully easy it is, how good it smells to be surrounded by earth, by these happy people and his friends, and the sun shining so warmly outside.
He is a simple person. It is a simple life.
Before the gray shutter comes down to close the shop, they see Manx's high heels clicking out on the sidewalk. And then it all comes to an abrupt, chilling end.
xviii.
In the middle of the night, Ken wakes to murmurs.
He blinks sleep-crusted brown eyes at an empty room cloaked in shadow—already the hazy, dream-caked shell of his mind is bewildered at this peaceful transition from his slumber to the world. Often he is only awakened by one of two things: the shrill cry of the alarm clock or the cold, shuddering grip of a nightmare ill-disguised as a memory. Both bring him back to reality suddenly, abruptly; there is no time for this sluggish examination of the way the curtains shift over the open window.
'It could let in more than the summer air,' the assassin in Ken says softly, and he jerks up in bed at the thought.
Cursing himself under his breath, crawling awkwardly out of the warm cocoon of his blankets and shivering when his bare calves and arms hit the cool air, he stumbles almost blindly to the window. The thin white t-shirt and soccer shorts are no protection from the alarmingly frigid night—wasn't it meant to be a summer?—and he rubs his arms vigorously as he sways there on the carpet, between his dreams and reality, still caught up in the soup-wading effect of illusion, and then he sees it as the curtains gently blow back again: the moon.
Huge, titanic, the largest and most luminescent moon he's ever seen, bleeding pale into a sky of charcoal and ink. It swallows everything and everyone, greedily enveloping the atmosphere, his wide eyes, his entire mind; white and overwhelming, dangerous, color of mother pearl and cleansing and emptiness. Taking him in until he stains it blood red—can't help it, really—and the ivory has gone crusted maroon falling apart to the people below who don't care that all is ending—
'And darkness shall cover all of Egypt for three days.'
When Ken wakes up, it is sudden. He is gasping for breath. The window is open, but there is no moon tonight.
xix.
He walks until he can no longer see the silver sheen of the florist shop windows, until the sidewalk has stretched on for all eternity before him—damp, gritty and narrow under his squeaky sneakers and mud-coated laces. He tries not to think about why he does it. It just is. That is the way of things.
In the quiet hours of the early morning, when the sun hasn't risen and the city is dark and empty, Ken waits for Farfarello.
It does not take long, as Ken had thought it would. He sits on a magazine rack that still have a pile left over to pick from, ignoring the crinkling paper under his jeans. The ground is too wet. So silent that he doesn't even realize it until it's over, the Berserker is standing at his side, crouching on that moist cement and sucking idly at the tip of a blade.
He wills the lump in his throat to go down. To burn away.
"Can't sleep?" The wavering joke passes his lips automatically, and he immediately cringes at the sound of it. Farfarello ignores him.
"The air is stale," he says, voice unreadable. "It is old, rotting with pollution. Can you taste it?"
He can. But he only swallows heavily, his tongue thick with questions he doesn't dare to ask.
"I know why you are here," Farfarello murmurs quietly. "I know you spend your days moving as if in dreams, stepping forward with the foolish hope there will be ground to step upon. But you dread it—the inevitable day your foot slips, and you land on nothing, just empty and dead air. Then what will happen, lamb of God?"
"Fall," Ken chokes. He sees it in his mind; looming, dreadful, the pocket of space of absolute nothingness, when he will cease to be and all will collapse around him. As if seeing it, as well, the madman beside him hums agreeably.
"You seek. The earth has lost its meaning. There is no dark and light; only shadow and flame. There is no right and wrong; only pleasure and pain. Vindication and revenge. You have your foot in the air with no where to put it. You are finished. Lost. Done," the Berserker adds with relish, tongue prodding at the glimmering metal shard in his fingers. His golden eye flutters in satisfaction. "How far will the kitten fall this time, however? Where is the bottom you fear so badly?"
His mouth is dry. This is it.
"You have seen Hell. You live in it. You bathe in the blood of innocents every night," the madman sighs wistfully. "Ah, but where will the kitten go, then? How much farther can he fall? For he doesn't realize the Truth."
"The truth?" The greed and desperation in his voice is ridiculous. He doesn't care. He turns, finally, to stare the Berserker straight in the face and lets everything show in his trembling mouth and wide eyes.
Farfarello laughs softly. Eye gleaming, he leans forward until his scarred face brushes Ken's, intimate and frightening, but the brunette does not move. He freezes in place and instinctively squeezes his eyes shut tightly. Those hideous lips touch the shell of his ear, delicate, careful.
"You're bleeding," it whispers, rasping. But he is not. And when he finally wills his body to stop its violent shaking, and opens his eyelids slowly, he is alone in the street and with an address scrawled on a flimsy piece of paper shoved between his fingers. It is to a warehouse on the other side of the town. Ken recognizes it.
He goes home. Undresses in the dark. He rips the paper to shreds; the address is burned into his brain. He sleeps.
xx.
"I can give you everything," the Berserker murmurs in his dream, holding out the blade crusted in blood. It carries a metallic scent and the shattered dreams of innocents everywhere.
In this dream, at this time, Ken wants to take it. He doesn't know why. He doesn't dare ask himself the question, even if he wants the answer.
"What's everything?" is what he asks.
It laughs at him, harshly, teeth pearl-white and of light. "Death."
He considers that. Peers into the empty, barren shadows around him, choking the breath and heartbeat. And then he says, stepping forward and gritting his teeth, "I've done Death. I want Life."
The Berserker stares at him.
"What is life?" Ken asks.
There is silence. And then it steps towards him, closer than it's ever been and so still that Ken can see the creases where smiles could have once met his mouth, and then the knife flashes in the pitch-black, and it could have brushed his lips or ripped them from his face, but either way it is a Kiss. It is a Truth.
In the absence of light, the golden eye closes. It stills. The world ends, and Ken is left standing in the ruins with all hope broken at his feet.
"Close your eyes, kitten. Take a step. And you will see."
The End