Summary: When everything hits the fan and life comes at you too quickly, it's the little things that count, and small memories are all you have to hang on to. Yohji realizes this and has to come to terms with the questions of how and if he wants to go on, once he has lost what is important to him.
Warnings: Some bad language. Violence. Heavy angst and drama.
Legal Stuff: As always, this story is intended to express one fan's genuine appreciation of Weiss Kreuz and its characters. It is just for fun and not for profit. If you have any rights in the anime described here and find the posting of this fanfiction offensive or harmful, please contact me, and I will be happy to remove it
Endgame: Part 1
"Just keep going. Keep moving. One foot in front of the other," Yohji panted, shifting around so that Aya's weight rested against him a bit more.
Aya didn't say anything, and it occurred to Yohji that he hadn't said anything for some time now. Yohji hadn't noticed; he had been too busy trying to elude the guards that had ambushed them. Now, though, he felt a pang of fear stab through his heart and into his gut. Aya had been in the lead when they had entered that room in search of their target, which meant he had walked head-first into the ambush. Which meant his body had shielded Yohji from the attack. Yohji figured he should have felt lucky. After all, he had escaped without a scratch. But how could he, when his good fortune came at such a high price?
How high … he didn't know yet. He hadn't had time to stop and take stock of Aya's injuries. He cringed inside, remembering how Aya had stumbled backward, out of the room and right into his arms. He had looked so surprised; Yohji couldn't ever remember Aya looking that way. Not the kind of expression Aya normally wore -- there for an instant and, then, shoved back down in favor of the emotionless mask he showed the rest of the world. No, this had been pure and genuine shock, the emotion and pain written there in Aya's wide-eyed expression, easy for Yohji to read, even at a glance. There had been so much blood. Too much, although Yohji forced that thought from his mind. In a little while, when they were safe, he could let himself think about it. Then, he could fall apart. Not now. Now, he needed to find somewhere for them to hide until the guards either passed them by or gave up on looking, or until Omi and Ken could get to them.
"Hey, you're still with me, right?" Yohji asked.
He glanced down and a little to the left, trying to catch his partner's eyes, trying to assure himself that Aya was all right. It didn't do any good. Aya leaned into Yohji's body, like a dead weight, and he moved with his head bowed. All Yohji could see was the top of Aya's head -- a small sea of red hair obscuring his vision. Red like the blood leaking from his body, dripping to the floor as they moved, and clinging to Yohji's clothes, hands, and hair.
He waited, hoping against hope that Aya would say something, staring at the top of Aya's head as he willed his partner to say the words he wanted to hear. They continued moving forward -- at a slow pace now, more stumbling along the hallway than actually walking. But, to Yohji, it felt as if everything stopped. As if the Earth itself stopped rotating as he stared at Aya and held his breath, waiting for some signal that the term "dead weight", which kept flitting through his brain, was a description and not the literal truth.
"Right?" Yohji prompted, after what seemed like an eternity's wait -- a lifetime and more, strung together on those precious seconds during which he fought down the fear clenching at his heart and tried to force himself to believe Aya was all right. That everything would be all right.
Finally, Aya nodded. Slowly, as if it took all the energy he could muster just to make the small motion. It wasn't the reaction or answer Yohji had hoped for. He had wanted verbal confirmation; he had wanted Aya to tell him to shut the fuck up and stop worrying like a mother hen. Hell, he didn't know what he had wanted, but he knew it was more than what he got. Still, one small head shake was better than nothing.
Yohji forced his thoughts away from Aya, turning his attention toward their surroundings. He had memorized the building's layout, and he had excellent recall and an almost photographic mental image of the blueprints, almost like having a map right inside his head. Even so, he wasn't sure where they were. He had been moving on blind instinct up to this point -- zigging and zagging, taking corridors and sharp turns without paying much attention, his only goal to put distance between them and their pursuers. Now, though, Yohji felt comfortable that he had accomplished that goal, at least for the moment.
This office building was a maze -- a labyrinth of corridors, all feeding off of each other, each one tumbling into another, then twisting and turning into yet another hallway. Yohji remembered how he had looked at the blueprints and joked about the architect being on crack at the time he had designed this place. It had seemed funny at the time, but now, the humor in it rang more than a little hollow. The crazy layout was a double-edged sword. Yohji felt like he could use it to his advantage to lose their pursers. But, it would make it hard for him to find his way back out, and, maybe, even harder for Omi and Ken to locate them.
In spite of its posh wall coverings and plush carpeting, the building echoed like nothing Yohji had ever heard. The whole time he and Aya had been moving, he had heard the men chasing them. The clatter of boots against the tiled parts of each floor, followed by the thudding sound of heavy soles hitting carpet, all accompanied by the guards' almost constant radio chatter and yells to each other. It all came back to Yohji's ears -- hollowed, muffled, and echoing down the twisting, turning hallways in this building. Not the best he could hope for, but more than adequate for him to get a rough estimate of where their enemies were. He hadn't heard anything for a while now, and that told him his pursuers, likely, had moved to another floor, or, at the very least, to the other side of this floor.
They had passed a bank of elevators a while back, and Yohji had paused long enough to send each car to a different floor, in the hopes of buying them some time and distance. It was a pretty transparent ruse, but he still hoped it had worked. At the very least, maybe it lured a few of the guards off of their trail. That would be small comfort, indeed, considering how outnumbered they were. But it would be something. And right now, Yohji would take whatever he could get.
He paused in the middle of the hallway. He should have felt exposed out in the open like this, but he didn't. Yohji found that juxtaposition rather odd, although he didn't give it too much thought. It was a passing fancy, flitting through his brain and out again in nanoseconds. He didn't have the energy or brain power to spare for useless shit like that right now. The corridor around them was dark, deserted, and quiet. He listened, hard, trying to catch any signs of the guards that had been chasing them. But, he only heard his own breathing -- loud, sharp pants that made his ribs ache. And, underneath that, the sound of Aya breathing -- long, almost desperate gasps of air that rasped and rattled out of him as he struggled for each successive breath. They were small noises and quickly lost in the hall's cavernous spaces. But, to Yohji, they seemed unreasonably loud, as if they would be enough to bring the guards down on them at any moment.
He needed to rest. Now that they had stopped moving, Yohji realized just how tired he was. The adrenaline spike that had served to let him fight his way free of the ambush and, then, elude the remaining guards thus far was starting to run out. And, in its place was a hollow, empty space, just waiting for the exhaustion to rush in and fill it up. And, it did. He was shocked at how quickly the wall of fatigue seemed to tumble down on him, seeking to bear him to the ground. He shouldn't have stopped moving. Now, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get started again, and they weren't safe yet. He couldn't quit now.
Yohji glanced down at his partner. If he needed to rest, it was a damn good bet that Aya needed it even more. He wasn't sure how Aya had managed to stay on his feet this far, although he had been carrying more and more of the younger man's weight as the precious minutes of their flight had ticked by. He wanted to tell Aya to hang on, that everything was going to be okay, but he didn't bother. He knew better than to waste his breath and energy on empty platitudes that wouldn't do either of them any good. He had to find a place for them to hole up, and he had to do it now. They had run out of time.
Yohji scanned the hallway around them. He felt the panic well up inside him, fueling the desperation that had been twisting its way through his insides ever since the ambush. A sudden, vivid image of Aya stumbling backward, into his arms, shot through Yohji's mind, followed by the memory of an expression of pain-filled shock fixed in blue-violet eyes that almost never held emotion of any kind.
No. Yohji shook his head. No. He couldn't think about that right now. Not if he wanted to get out of this mess alive, not if he wanted to keep his partner safe. He shoved the images and memories out of his mind with a ruthless anger. Later, he knew he would dwell on them. He knew he would torture himself with them, that he would see these sights and remember those moments with a sick-edged clarity in both his waking and sleeping hours. But, now, he couldn't. He had to focus.
"Come on, Kudou," he muttered to himself, the words lost under the raspy sound of his own breathing, "Pull your shit together and think. You're smarter than you look, right? So, prove it."
He took another look up and down the hallway. The carpeting here was softer than what he had found in the rest of the building. Instead of the standard, institutional beige coloring, it seemed to be a deep, dark maroon, or, maybe, green -- something dark enough that it looked like a sea of shadow spreading out in front of him in the dimly lit hallway -- and the walls were dark, too. It looked as if they were covered in some kind of wood paneling, which gave the hallway a cavernous, cave-like appearance. Yohji reviewed his mental map of the building, trying to match up their surroundings with one of the locations he had marked on the blueprints when he had reviewed them back at the Koneko. Sure, he had been running blindly, going on instinct alone in trying to avoid the guards. But Yohji's instincts were flawless. He couldn't have survived this long as a Hunter of the Night if they weren't. And, instinctively, he knew he had come here for a reason. Something half remembered off of the building's blueprints.
That's when it hit him. They were on what Omi had called "Executive Row", where the company presidents and senior vice presidents had their offices. And, this area of the building had its own heating and cooling system, both of which were accessed through a special maintenance door. If he remembered correctly, it had looked like the door was concealed inside one of the wood panels. And, if he was really lucky, he had ended up in the right hallway -- the one containing the maintenance hatch.
Yohji moved over to one side of the hallway and, as gently as he could, lowered Aya to the floor. Aya tried to help, but he was too weak to hold himself up. He braced himself against the wall and slid down it as Yohji guided him into a sitting position, doing his best to soften Aya's impact with the floor. Aya's body left a streak of blood in its wake -- a black smear, hardly noticeable against the darkness of the wood paneling -- but it seemed to stand out to Yohji, as if it had been splashed across the wall with glow-in-the-dark paint. He frowned at it and, then, at the way Aya sat there, slumped over and defeated, staring at the floor as if it took every ounce of willpower and energy he had just to draw one breath after another.
Aya shuddered as a wave of pain passed through his body, and, for a fleeting moment or two, Yohji thought, maybe, that was the truth -- that Aya really didn't have anything left in him, that he was at the end of the line and wouldn't make it out of this.
No. Just … no. Yohji shoved the thought out of his head almost as soon as it occurred to him. He couldn't think like that. He wouldn't. Aya was too important to him, too much a part of his life. He couldn't imagine his life without Aya in it. What's more, he didn't want to. He had lived through Asuka. Just barely, and every day continued to be a struggle. But he had made it. Now, though, he realized Aya's loss was something he couldn't live through. It was too much. So, he wouldn't think about it. Ever. Aya would be all right. He just had to, and that was that, as far as Yohji was concerned.
The little voice at the back of his mind whispered to him that he didn't have any say in the matter. No matter how much he wanted to believe otherwise, no matter how strongly he felt about it, he had no control over the situation. Yohji told that voice to shut the hell up. He didn't want to hear it. Not now. Not ever.
Yohji squatted down in front of Aya, so that he was on eye level with the younger man. Aya didn't look at him; Yohji couldn't tell if he was avoiding eye contact, or if he just didn't have the energy. Whatever the reason, Aya stared at the floor until Yohji reached out and, cupping Aya's chin in a gloved hand, raised Aya's head so that their eyes met and their gazes locked.
He hated what he saw. Aya stared right at him, but his eyes were empty and blank, almost as if he looked right through Yohji. Or, even worse, as if he no longer saw anything at all. Yohji felt his heart skip a beat and his stomach clench with dread. He was becoming all too intimately acquainted with that particular emotion. It was as if it had slithered into his gut, where it coiled up into a cold, hard knot.
"Hey, you're hanging in there … right?" Yohji asked, cringing at how whiny and pathetic his voice sounded -- as if he expected Aya to make him feel better, when things should work the other way around, especially now.
He waited, holding his breath, hoping for some response, for some sign that Aya had heard him. He wasn't sure what he wanted, or what he expected. But, it didn't matter; he didn't get it. He didn't get anything except that blank, eerie stare.
Yohji sighed and ran his fingers through Aya's hair. It was a gesture that was gentle and caring and, yet, too familiar. At any other time, it would seem out of place. But now, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Aya must have thought so, too, because he leaned into Yohji's hand, taking comfort in the brief contact. It wasn't like Aya to react like that, and, far from reassuring Yohji, it made him feel even worse about their situation.
"All right," he said, his voice soft, hardly above a whisper, "I think there's a maintenance closet or something just down this hallway. I'm gonna go look for it. I'll be right back."
He started to stand, but Aya's hand latched on to the sleeve of his coat in a death grip, refusing to let him leave and drawing Yohji's attention back to Aya's face. Instead of the blank, empty expression of a few moments ago, Yohji saw fear in Aya's eyes. Fear, and an unspoken plea: "Don't leave me alone."
Yohji wanted to placate Aya. Now, more than ever, he wanted to comfort his friend. But he knew better. They didn't have time. Yohji had, maybe, bought them a few minutes of relief from the guards, but the small distractions he had managed wouldn't lead those men astray for much longer. Time was one thing it seemed he and Aya didn't have -- in more ways than one. No matter how hard it was to walk away and leave Aya sitting there -- hurting, alone, and afraid -- even if it was only for a moment or two, Yohji knew he had to do it. He placed his hand over Aya's, enclosing the grasping fingers in a brief embrace -- leather against leather -- before, gently, prying Aya's hand off of his coat. Aya tried to pull away, but Yohji held onto him; at the same time, he leaned forward, slipping his free hand behind Aya's head, so that he cradled the younger man's neck. He leaned forward and pulled Aya toward him a little bit, until their foreheads touched.
"I'm not leaving you. I'll be right back. I promise," Yohji whispered, all the while holding Aya in that impromptu embrace. "You don't leave me, either. All right?"
He waited for a moment -- the span of a heartbeat, or, maybe, two -- until Aya nodded.
"Okay," Yohji said.
He tightened his embrace on Aya, just for a moment, and then let go, rising to his feet in almost the same motion. The swish of his leather coat seemed loud in the silent, deserted hallway. Before he could change his mind, he moved away, ticking off markers on his mental map until he thought he was close to the maintenance closet. He paused several feet down the hall and tapped on the paneling. The mail lining in his glove made a solid-sounding clink. He continued moving down the corridor, pausing to tap every few feet, until, finally, he was rewarded with the sound of a hollow thump. Satisfied that he had found the maintenance closet door, Yohji spared a glance back toward his partner. Aya hadn't moved; he still sat slumped against the wall, staring at the floor. Once he was assured that Aya was hanging in there, Yohji bent his attention toward finding the mechanism that would open the door and give them a safe hiding place. At least, he hoped it would be a safe hiding place. Either it would be a refuge, or he would be trapping them and sealing their doom. Yohji didn't allow himself to think about that possibility. He couldn't. It didn't matter, anyhow; they were officially out of options.
Yohji pulled off one of his gloves, gripping the leather with his teeth and tugging it off that way in order to keep his hands free in case he had to use his weapons. He grimaced and almost choked at the strong, iron taste of the blood that had seeped into the leather. Aya's blood. The thought made Yohji want to puke, but he fought off the urge and bent his attention to feeling the paneling, digging his fingers into every nook and cranny in search of the door's release.
It felt like it took forever and a day, although Yohji knew it couldn't have been more than a few seconds before his fingers scrabbled against a lever, rewarding him with the metallic click of a lock disengaging. The closet door swung open, out into the hallway, revealing an opening that was no bigger than a large crawl space. Yohji stuck his head inside and looked around, frowning at the sight of metal walls and the vague shadows of receding ductwork he could just make out at the edges of his vision. It would be a tight fit, but he would make it work. He had to.
As he retraced his steps back to Aya, he clicked on his communicator. He had been trying to avoid breaking radio silence, but, like so many things at the tail end of this evening, Yohji realized he didn't have any choice in the matter. He hated that -- being out of choices. Yohji figured a man should never find himself in that position. Let alone finding himself in that position several times in the span of a few hours.
"Bombay. Siberian. Anyone copy?" Yohji's voice never rose above a whisper, but, even so, he could hear the fear and urgency in his tone. He knew it would telegraph over the communicators, just as if he had yelled out his innermost feelings to his teammates.
There were a few seconds of static, before Omi's voice replied, sounding as if the youngest Weiss was sitting right inside Yohji's ear. Yohji felt a shiver run down his spine. He hated using these damn things. They never failed to make his teeth itch -- and not in a good way.
"I'm here," Omi replied.
"We need you and Siberian here. Now," Yohji said, his voice flat and matter-of-fact, although he continued to speak in hushed tones.
There was a pause -- a hesitation so laced with fear that Yohji could practically feel the emotion radiating at him out of the communicator. Omi had to know something was wrong. The fact that Yohji was breaking radio silence in the middle of a mission was proof of that. But he didn't ask. Maybe he was afraid to; Yohji thought, if he was in Omi's position, that's how he would feel -- wanting to know what had happened, needing to know what had happened, and, yet, afraid to ask. As if asking would make his worst fears come true.
Instead, Omi said, "Things aren't clear on our end. We haven't finished our part, and there are more patrols than our intel indicated."
Yohji felt the anger well up inside him. He didn't want to feel this way. He especially didn't want to feel this way toward Omi, when he knew Omi didn't mean to sound so cold and distant, when he knew Omi spoke out of fear, more than anything else. But, this was one more of those things he couldn't help. Aya was dying. It was the first time since the ambush that Yohji had allowed himself to think the words, and he felt like a traitor for doing it, even as the truth behind them smacked into his psyche like a well-timed gut punch. Aya was dying. Now wasn't the time for Omi to try and hide behind mission parameters and objectives.
"Fuck the mission," Yohji snarled, voicing his thoughts. "The mission is a bust. Our intel was fucked. Everything was fucked. This is you and me, kiddo, not some mission parameter or objective. We were ambushed in the target's office, and the guards are out there. I shook them, for now. But, we need help here. There are too many, and I can't get us clear. Where the fuck are you guys, anyhow? I need you here … like yesterday."
There was another silence. It couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, but, to Yohji, it seemed much longer. He could almost hear Omi's mind whirring, working through all the probabilities and trying to figure out what had happened, trying to figure out what was wrong. Trying to figure it out without having to ask, without making Yohji say the words that would make this nightmare a reality for all of them. Yohji knew Omi had a good idea of what was going on. Omi was smart, and he had been working as an assassin longer than any of them. Omi might not want to ask, but Yohji's choice of words had told him everything he needed to know.
Just when Yohji was beginning to think they had gotten cut off, the silence in his ear broke with a crackle, carrying Omi's voice with it.
"Ten minutes. Can you hole up until then?"
"Yeah, but it's too long," Yohji snarled.
"It's … how long it'll take," Omi replied.
His voice was soft and calm -- business as usual. But Yohji could hear the note of sadness and regret curving around the words. At any other time, the sound of that emotion and the way Omi struggled to hold it back would have softened Yohji's heart. It would have made him want to comfort Omi, or, at the very least, to see things from Omi's perspective. Now, though, it didn't matter. Right now, Yohji didn't care.
"It's not good enough," Yohji started to argue.
Aya's voice crackled over the communicator, startling Yohji into silence.
"It's … fine," Aya mumbled.
His voice was low and raspy, and he spoke slowly, as if every word was an effort. Yohji stared at him and shook his head, as if he could will Aya to stop. As if he could change the way all of this was going just by wanting it badly enough. But he couldn't. The tightness in his throat and the dread in his heart told him that much.
"I … don't have ten minutes," Aya said.
Even though he spoke in that same halting, weak voice, he said the words in a way that was matter-of-fact, as if he was telling them he would stop off to pick up a gallon of milk on his way home. Yohji had seen the emotion in Aya's eyes. He had read it as fear, but, now, he wondered if he had been mistaken. How could Aya talk like that? Like it was nothing? Yohji knew it was irrational, but he felt the anger rising within him once more. It was just his night to be fucking pissed at everything and everyone -- at the fuckers who had done this to Aya, at Omi and Ken, for not being here when he needed them, and at Aya, for being such a bastard and putting him through this. Yohji knew it was irrational, but that didn't matter at the moment. Nothing about this situation was rational. Nothing about it made sense, and nothing about it was all right. And, right now, he just wanted to be pissed.
Another long pause on Omi's end of the communicator, followed by a mumbled, "All right, Abyssinian. We copy."
"That's … that's bullshit, and you know it," Yohji snapped. "You're just going to leave us hanging like this? When Abyssinian is …"
"Enough, Balinese," Omi's voice cut through Yohji's argument. "Not now. Not over the comm. I'm locked onto your location. We'll be there in ten; find a place and hole up." He paused for a second or two and, then, added, in a choked voice that barely carried over the communicator's staticky crackle, "Abyssinian …"
Omi's voice trailed off, as if he was searching for words that would convey his feelings, that would tell Aya to hang on and keep fighting, but, at the same time, wouldn't reveal anything about their situation. But no words in the world could do that. They all knew it.
"Abyssinian, Out," Aya said, breaking the connection and saving Omi from floundering around.
Somehow, the finality of that was even worse. Yohji heard Omi gasp -- a slight intake of breath that was so soft it was almost lost under the sound of Omi signing out by flipping off his communicator. Rage, fear, and the most profound sorrow he had ever felt raced through Yohji's heart. He stood there and stared at the floor as he fought to swallow down the lump in his throat. He didn't have time for this now. He didn't have time to fall apart. It seemed like he had told himself that a million times over in the short span of time since he and Aya had stumbled away from the ambush in their target's office, and it was as true now as it had been the first time the sentiment had run through his mind.
When he thought he had his emotions under control once more, Yohji turned back toward Aya and helped him get to his feet. Ten minutes. Such a short amount of time, and, yet, it might as well have been a lifetime. Yohji could feel Aya's body trembling against him, and he glanced down at his partner, realizing that, this time, ten minutes really was a whole lifetime. The thought brought no comfort, but Yohji did his best to brush it off as he half-carried Aya toward the maintenance closet.