A/N: This fic is my baby, the first I ever posted. It recently won first place in the Angst Category in the 2005 Seeing Red Contest. (Yes, I'm bragging.) I hope you enjoy it and please review, it's the air I breathe.
Yohji watched as Aya watered the stands of flowers, lilies, lilacs, violets, and a long assortment of colors the blond didn't feel up to naming at the moment. He was too enchanted by the way the late-afternoon sunlight turned the water droplets to millions of rain bowed diamonds and turned strands of crimson hair to ruby flames. Once again he asked himself why he'd never noticed before how beautiful Aya was. Why hadn't he realized why he found everything about the younger assassin so fascinating? Why, when he looked at the stars and thought of violet eyes sparkling in anger. How the twisting flames of a fire brought to mind blood red locks dancing with the wind.
/Because you're an idiot, that's why/ a little voice told him helpfully. Yohji smiled ruefully at the thought. Stupid or stubbornly in denial. Of course he should have known why everything seemed so much more alive around the redhead. Why he caught his eyes following every graceful movement. Why his thoughts constantly lingered on the slim, young man. Why the sun seemed brighter, the wind sweeter, and life just better whenever Aya was near. Because he'd fallen in love. Head-over-fucking-heels in love with the anti-social redhead of Weiss- and he didn't even know when it had happened.
But the realization of the fact that he was indeed very much in love with Aya had hit him like a ton of bricks. He remembered the moment perfectly.
He'd been racing up the stairs o the roof of the high-rise, flames licking his skin and smoke burning his lungs and making his eyes sting. The one thought on his mind that Aya was up there and the building was ready to go at any moment. And gods, he had to be okay because if he wasn't . . . if he wasn't . . . Because if Aya wasn't alright, nothing in the world would be alright ever again.
The terrifying vision of the redhead lying up there, hurt, with the hateful flames burning ever closer made his heart pound painfully in his chest. The thought of losing Aya was just like . . . just like losing Asuka.
When those words had flown across his almost panicked mind he'd stopped, forgetting for a moment the smothering smoke and scorching heat. His mind had whirled as he tried to understand why Aya was so important to him. And just like that he came to the conclusion that somehow, somewhere along the way, Aya had replaced Asuka as foremost in his heart and mind.
Thankfully though, once he'd worked out his own feeling he hadn't wasted another precious second. That very same night, after they'd hauled their battered, charred butts home, he'd gone to Aya's room and told the redhead what he'd discovered in that burning stairwell. And miracle of miracles, those icy eyes had softened the tiniest bit and Aya had smiled that faint, sweet smile.
It hadn't been easy, of course, for Aya to let down his guard or believe that Yohji was serious. It had taken two months to convince the man that he was honestly in love with him. Two months of staying home, trying to get the icy man to open up a little.
Aya'd been very hesitant about the whole thing. Wary of Yohji's reputation, afraid of being used, discarded, and hurt. Two solid months before Aya'd admitted to feeling anything more than disdain for the blond and finally given Yohji a chance.
Now, here it was, six months into the relationship and Yohji was still completely enamored with his amazing lover. He couldn't get enough of him; he was as necessary as air to the blond assassin. He'd also found Aya to be . . . amazing behind closed doors, and not just in bed. He talked more, smiled more, was all together more at ease; as if when the door was shut and the lock thrown home the world was nothing more than that room. It was there that they could forget everything but each other. There were no problems, no guilt, no fear.
They'd talk long into the night about everything imaginable, from how it had felt to take that first life, to the most trivial of random thoughts and never once worry about not being understood.
It was . . . perfect. Yohji couldn't imagine being happier.
Now if only that sister of his would wake up Aya would be just as happy as he was, Yohji was sure.
/I'd give anything to make you happy, do you know that, Aya/ he silently asked his lover. /Absolutely anything./
Not that there was a hell of a lot he could do about waking Aya-chan up and he was certain the redhead would never be truly happy until that happened.
X X X
It was a brilliant Saturday morning and they were driving along the coast, just enjoying the sun and the salty smell of the ocean air. Enjoying the peace and the companionship. Enjoying a moment of peace in lives twisted by darkness.
Yohji never expected a blowout. Never expected Seven to skid wildly off the road. Never expected the car to flip. Didn't remember blacking out . . .
"Yohji."
/What? Who's there/
"Yohji."
/I'm tired, go away./
"Yohji."
/WHAT, dammit/
"Yohji."
Out of sheer annoyance the blond drug his eyes open and found himself- Standing in the rain by a house, with no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there.
"Yohji."
The assassin spun around and came face-to-face with the man who had, apparently, been repeatedly calling his name to awake him in this unfamiliar place. Long, black hair that reached his thighs and glittered with blue highlights; eyes a sparkling, molten silver that he knew, with sickening certainty, looked straight down into his soul. He was a bit shorter than Yohji, with about the same build as Aya- Aya! Oh my god! Aya!
Emerald eyes darted around in panic. Where was he? Where was the car? Fuck, where was the ocean?
"We're curious, Yohji," the man said evenly, and the tall assassin turned to him once again, emerald eyes ablaze.
Something wasn't . . . right. Yohji had a creepy feeling, the little hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention. This guy was . . . off, somehow. And it put him further on guard, the sense of wrongness surrounding the man. He studied him carefully, half looking for weapons, half trying to figure out what the fuck . . ? His eyes widened as it hit him that, though it was pouring rain and he was soaked to the skin, this man was bone-dry. The rain seemed to disappear before it managed to touch so much as a single strand of dark hair.
"You said you'd give anything to make him happy," the stranger continued in a soft, musical voice that made some distant part of Yohji long to hear him sing. "We want to see if you have that kind of conviction. So, we're giving you the chance."
"What the fuck are you talking about! Who the hell are you! Who is this 'we' you're talking about! Where the hell are we! And WHERE'S AYA!" Yohji yelled, worried and unnerved by this bizarre stranger and this impossible situation. Half panicked, confused and absolutely terrified that Aya wasn't here. What if he was still in the car? What if he was hurt? What if . . ?
The man nodded to something behind the blond and Yohji turned and felt his jaw drop. Running up the road, in the rain, were two children, laughing together for the joy of being alive. And one of them was unmistakably his lover, different, almost . . . younger?
His amethyst eyes still bright and innocent and happy. Then the girl . . . Aya chan. She was awake! . . . No, Yohji realized with something like fear, she hasn't . . . It hasn't happened yet!
"Oh my god," he whispered, disbelieving eyes watching the pair as they entered the house. /His home/ he thought detachedly.
"Well, Yohji?"
"This is real?" he asked breathlessly, eyes never leaving the house.
"Oh, yes."
A girl's scream ripped through the night, impossibly loud, impossibly clear.
Time slowed, heartbeats became eternities as thoughts flew fast as floodwater through the blonde's mind. This was a chance to stop the disaster that had driven Aya to become an assassin. He'd been given a chance to save the beloved sister from her hopeless, tragic state. To save Aya from ever having to sit by her hospital bed and wonder if she'd ever open her eyes again. A chance to spare Aya all that pain. He'd never kill, never bear the guilt of spilling blood. He'd never have to be an assassin.
He'd never be an assassin.
He'd never be Weiss.
He'd never know Yohji and even if they met . . . Yohji would still be a killer. To save him, to spare him, to give him the happiness and the real life he deserved . . .Yohji would lose him forever. Everything they'd shared would never happen. Ken and Omi would not remember their leader. There would never be an Abyssinian.
/I'd give anything to make you happy . . ./
Anything? He'd never dreamed it might mean giving him up. Never thought that anything' might be the very thing he'd do it for. He'd never thought about the enormity of that word.
And he had only seconds to decide if he was willing to make the sacrifice.
The house exploded.
/Anything, Aya/ he thought, tears already stinging his eyes.
"Ran-niisan!"
Tires screeched and Yohji was already moving, a hundred thousand memories flashing through his mind like rapid fire. That first kiss, how sweet the redhead had tasted, how soft those lips had been. That first night together and how Aya had been fidgety and shy and how he'd let Yohji teach him. Aya smiling shyly and handing him a bouquet of flowers. Aya reclining in the sun. Aya sound asleep in his arms, lips brushing lightly across his throat. All of it, every moment they'd ever shared. The way Aya said his name. The way the stars had reflected in his eyes. The way he felt inside every single time he touched the younger man. And Aya's joyous, carefree laughter as he ran through the rain with his sister.
It had never been a choice at all. How could he ever choose his own happiness over Aya's?
He tackled the girl, throwing them both out of the path of the speeding car.
Then he was up and moving again, going after the car, which conveniently stopped. Blinded by tears, he yanked the open the door and hauled out the very shocked, fat-bastard Takatori. He'd never cried during a kill before, not even Neu's.
And he didn't cry now as he wrapped his wire around the evil motherfucker's throat. He sobbed. He wept like a baby for all that would never be. For the love he'd given up to give Aya back that laughter.
And when the politician's body stopped thrashing he stood and moved a few feet away before his legs gave out and he collapsed in the mud. He sat there in the soaking rain and watched through his tears as the girl ran to her brother.
/Oh, Aya . . ./ He bowed his head as sobs wracked his body and the loss ripped his soul to shreds. He'd never known it could hurt so much to keep a promise Aya hadn't even heard. To love him enough to erase everything they'd ever had together. To unmake all the moment of simple happiness they'd shared. Moments that would never happen now. He'd never find Aya unconscious in the Koneko. He'd never fight beside him. He'd never race up a collapsing stairwell to the man he hadn't yet realized he loved. He'd never stop in shock to realize that love. He'd never hold Aya close and whisper that love. It was over. Every bit of joy he'd found with Aya . . . it was over.
He'd never again run his fingers through that thick, fiery hair. Never again listen to the soft sound of his lover's breathing as he slept. Never again pull him near, kiss his lips, take long walks under the dying sun, gaze endlessly into the bottomless, violet depths of his eyes. The only truly pure thing to come out of working for Kritiker, his love for Aya, and he'd let it go.
And given the chance he'd do it again.
A hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up with broken eyes to find the stranger standing over him. "Well done, Yohji. Well done."
He tried to smile, but it was a faint, trembling movement of his mouth; his emerald eyes still clouded by tears. He looked back to the pair of children clutching each other tightly in the mud by their ruined, burning home, both of them too shocked to think of anything beyond that they were alive and their world had been torn apart.
"Will I remember?" he asked softly. /Please say yes/ he silently begged. /If he'll never remember, if he'll never know, I'll remember for us both. Please, it's all I have now./
"Yes," came the softly voiced assurance.
"He won't remember," he whispered, voice barely a breath. "Omi and Ken won't . . . They won't ever know him . . ."
"No."
"He'll . . . They'll be okay, won't they? He'll be happy now?"
"I cannot predict the future with such certainty," the man told him evenly. "But you have afforded him the chance."
/At a heavier cost than I ever imagined paying. Heavier than I could have imagined./ He'd never dreamed it would end, much less that it would never come to be. But Aya wouldn't be a part of his world any longer. Aya wouldn't bear that cross.
"He won't be there, will he, when I go back?" he asked, emotions rolling madly inside his head, heart already aching, because he already knew . . .
"No."
And Yohji cried.
/ . . . do you know that, Aya/
No, and now he never would.
XXX
Yohji knew he was in a hospital before he managed to drag open tired eyes, the smell of medicine and cleaning agents assaulting his nose. Omi and Ken standing over him, large, worried eyes watching him carefully. Had it been a dream, then? Was Aya still his to hold at night? Perhaps his lover was in the next bed, ready to yell at him for wrecking the car . . .
"Where's Aya?" he demanded hoarsely.
"Trust you to nearly get yourself killed and ask about a woman upon waking," Ken laughed. "Doesn't anything take your mind off your girlfriends?"
Yohji felt something shatter in his heart, perhaps it was his heart itself and perhaps it was some last shard of fragile hope. It was real. Aya was really gone. Really lost to him forever. Oh gods . . .
He slumped back to the bed, wanting the tears to come, wanting to give this pain some way out. Oh, gods, it hurt . . . But the tears wouldn't come. He stared blankly at the ceiling, eyes seeing Aya. The flash of sunlight on crimson hair. The silver sheen of his skin in moonlight. The amethyst eyes that, if one knew how to look, showed every facet of Aya's soul. He was lost in the memories. The passion behind every one of his love's kisses. The almost desperate way he held on to him when they made love. The gentle touch of a calloused hand against his cheek. The heart-wrenching sincerity in his voice when he told Yohji he loved him.
The way his whole face would light up when Yohji told him the same.
And simpler things. How he'd sit for hours working on an arrangement of flowers till it was perfect. How he didn't like the rain. How thunder made him shiver. How his hands were always cold until he touched Yohji. How he'd throw him that faint, shy smile at the oddest of times. How Aya would lay with his head against his chest and fall asleep listening to the beating of his lover's heart. How he'd blush at the silliest things and sing when he thought no one would hear and dance with him when Yohji pleaded. How he'd loved listening to Yohji play the piano, eyes closed, head tilted, fingers following the rhythm, that precious smile on his face. How he was always there if Yohji had a nightmare and held him close till the sun lightened the sky again. How he'd continuously braid bits of the blond hair, the love in his eyes strong enough to feel- like the spring sun against your face after a long, bleak winter. How he'd laughed with his sister and the innocence in his eyes. How Yohji absolutely could not imagine life without him; simply could not think of picking up the wide-scattered pieces of his broken heart.
Trembling, Yohji rolled away from his friends. "Go away," he whispered, voice a bare breath.
"Wha-? Yohji-kun?" Omi began worriedly.
"Please . . . Just . . . leave me alone." Because how could he begin to make them understand what he'd lost? How could he make them miss a man that no longer existed to them?
Glancing at each other in concern the two younger men slowly did as asked.
Curling up on the bed, Yohji ignored the drug-dulled pain in his body, it wasn't even a shadow to the agony tearing at the shredded bits that remained of his soul. He squeezed his eyes shut as the tears finally came, burning slow trails down his golden cheeks.
"Aya . . ." he whispered into the tear-dampened pillow, knowing there would never be an answer. "Aya . . ."
XXX
He sat in the bare room holding a picture, eyes dry. It had been a week since the wreck and today he'd finally been allowed to come home. But it wasn't the home he remembered. He'd found the picture first and the shock had sent him reeling. It was the picture some fan girl had taken- but it had been of the four of them and now there were only three. Aya wasn't there. It looked . . . all wrong; no one in the center of the picture, just Yohji to the right yawning, Omi, with a hold on Ken's ear to the left. Aya was supposed to be in the middle, looking over his shoulder at the camera, holding a flowerpot. If he closed his eyes he could still see it correctly.
Shaking, he'd run upstairs to the redhead's room and found it . . . empty. Where were Aya's things? His bed? His books? His katana? There was nothing. Aya was simply . . . gone, as though he'd never been. Yohji shook his head. "He never was here, idiot," he whispered to himself in the silence of the blank room. "He's not gone. He never came . . ."
/Maybe there never was an Aya/ a voice suggested in the back of his head. /Maybe you imagined it all./
/I didn't/ Yohji told himself, hand clenching on the frame.
/Maybe you've finally snapped; taken a nose-dive into insanity./
/I'm not crazy/ he thought fiercely. /I remember/
/You also remember changing the past./
He shook his head hard, eyes tightly shut. Stumbling to his feet, he retreated to his room, trying to hide from a world without Aya. "Aya . . ." he whispered, sliding down the inside of his door, hugging his knees to his chest, picture still clutched in one hand. Lifeless emerald eyes traveled slowly around the room, pausing on all the things his love had ever touched. All the books he'd borrowed were returned, he noted detachedly. Then he gasped, picture falling forgotten from numb fingers.
There, sitting on the table, drenched in afternoon sunlight, was Aya's katana and, beside it, the last bouquet of flowers his lover had gifted him with- roses and cattleya orchids wound together by globe amaranth; their image flowers held together by tiny purple flowers that meant unfading love. Very slowly he stood and crossed the room to the treasures, eyes wide in wonderment. The flowers should be dead, or at least wilted . . . but they were as perfect as the day Aya had given them to him. A day that had never happened in this world.
The katana, resting serenely on its rack, had undeniably seen use and, when he unsheathed it, it gleamed silver in the light. Bright, sharp, and deadly, as Aya'd always kept it. Yohji studied it in awe and saw on the blade, near the hilt, was a fingerprint. "Aya . . ." He bowed his head as still more tears made their appearance; tears for Aya when he had none for himself.
The flowers never died, never changed. Yohji would wonder everyday what magic sustained them, but was grateful that it did. They, along with the sword, were all he had left of Aya, besides his memories. They were his proof that he wasn't mad, that there had been a man named Aya whom he'd loved- loved enough to let go.
He was putting the finishing touches on an arrangement, one even Aya would have been proud of, he thought with bittersweet pride. He place it on the shelf and turned to see if Omi needed any help . . . and . . . his . . . heart . . . stopped . . .
There stood Aya, just as he'd remembered him, but he was relaxed, his eyes unguarded, smiling.
"Ne, Ran-niisan!" a girl smiled up at him, pointing to Yohji's latest masterpiece. "That's the one I want! Please?"
/Ran . . . His name was Ran./ The redhead nodded to his sister and came over to ask Yohji about the flowers.
The blond moved as if in a dream, giving the flowers to a man he loved but had never met.
"How much, please?" Ran asked politely. And he almost lost it, then, at the sound of the familiar deep voice, lacking the anger that had only ever been absent behind closed doors, with him.
"On the house," Yohji heard himself say, smiling sadly as the tears stung the backs of his eyes. "They deserve to go with someone who'll appreciate them."
The redhead gave him a funny look. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," he breathed, finding it so very hard to speak when he wanted so much to wrap his arms around him, tell him the once-truth. He wanted, for one selfish moment, to undo all that he had done. To take back the promise that it had broken his heart to keep. To just have Aya back. But no, this was better . . . Surely, this was better . . . wasn't it?
"Okay, I . . . Thank you." He turned to leave and before Yohji could stop himself, he had grabbed him by the arm, turning him to face him again.
He gazed searchingly into violet eyes he missed so much. "Ran . . . Are you happy, Ran?" he whispered, voice so full of emotions the redhead couldn't begin to name them. The tall man spoke as though his happiness was the most important thing in the world to him, as if he mattered to this stranger.
Ran looked up at him in confusion. "Am I . . ? Yes. Yes, I am."
"Then . . . Then it's okay." Yohji released him, fighting back the tears that threatened to break free, perhaps never to stop again. He watched the siblings leave the shop, Ran staring at the flowers as if they held some secret he couldn't quite grasp.
Omi put his hand on his friend's arm, staring up at him with confused cornflower eyes. "Yohji-kun . . ? Did you know him?"
"Yes . . . I did once," he smiled sadly at the boy. "But not in this life."