Don't own, don't sue.
BLUE EYES BLUE
In the basement of a Richschlyder Industries warehouse, Emily Aster watched her charge with deep bemusement. Until her mother's death, the girl had been a bubbly, excitable child, willful, intelligent, and altogether engaging. Lia Sorenson's murder two weeks ago had instantly dulled the sparkling, effervescent brilliance that made her daughter such a joy to protect. Now Hitomi lay absolutely unmoving on the gritty concrete floor, eyes open but unseeing, dulled by sadness and despair no four-year-old should ever endure.
Lia Sorenson had been abducted as a young girl, intended for sale on the white slave market. Unfortunately for her, she had been such a beautiful child that Rosenthal had kept her for himself, and for eight years she had been brutalized for his personal amusement. Her eventual rescue at fifteen landed her in Tokyo, in a peculiar establishment governed by an even more peculiar woman. In fact, Emily had been vaguely acquainted with the House of Lilies even before Lia hired her to keep her daughter, because of its connections to both Rosenthal and her old friend der Kaiser's son.
It was unfortunate that Lia had been killed, unfortunate that Emily had been unable to protect her. But the woman, only two years Emily's junior, had been quite specific in her instructions: if both she and her daughter were threatened, Emily's duty was to Hitomi and Hitomi alone, especially if Lia's presence could further endanger her child.
In this ugly, silent place, Emily permitted herself to mourn the dead woman. The loss of such a life, its beginnings and its end so very tragic, scorched her soul. Rosenthal and his many sins bound her to the dead woman by ties of experience that no words could ever have duplicated. A quiet oath echoed in the recesses of her mind, a promise devoting Emily to the one beautiful consequence of Lia's short life: a child already tarnished with grief because of Rosenthal's evil.
Emily's green eyes studied Hitomi's motionless form intently. No waking child should ever be so still, thought her Keeper, all at once bemused and incensed. She would have reached out to hold any other child, but Hitomi's grief clung about her like thorns on a rose, putting off any who would touch her. When Emily came too close to the pain, by touch or by word, she shied away from the well-meaning, but uncomprehending and thus unwelcome compassion, and the blankness in her eyes became a warning to stay away.
It was an expression Emily knew all too well. Hitomi's beautiful eyes, for which she had been named, were intimately familiar to Emily, and seeing that threat expressed in their deep blue depths flooded her mind with old memories that would have been better left undisturbed.
Paul had been hurt – badly hurt, she remembered. Blood had welled and oozed and dripped with alarming regularity, not tapering off, not letting up, but continuing to well and ooze and drip, despite her repeated attempts to staunch the flow. In the shadows, der Kaiser's eyes had been hooded in the darkness; it wasn't until she called him out, infuriated that he'd allowed such a thing to come to pass, that she'd seen the devastation in his eyes. He'd failed, he'd allowed his precious, precious friend to be injured, hadn't been able to protect him, had barely managed to escape alive with him. He'd frightened himself and the girl he'd tacitly promised to protect, he'd failed the two people he really gave a damn about, and he hated himself for it. She would have gone to him, after Paul's injuries were bound, but something in his eyes had alternately warned and begged her to stay away.
He hadn't trusted her with that pain then; probably he had felt that she was too young, too frail for the burden. He shared it with Paul instead, when Paul had roused himself. She could still hear the quiet murmurs of that conversation, could remember Paul's voice, composed, firm, a calming influence on his mercurial partner. The friendship was intact, the incident a minor mistake, and it was never mentioned again.
Paul said der Kaiser's son had found such a friend, and she was pleased to hear it, but Amano Ginji wasn't the first individual who had been able to exercise such a calming will over Midou Ban. Before her murder almost four years ago, that person had run a curious kind of pleasure house in Tokyo. She had once rescued a badly traumatized fifteen year old girl from Rosenthal; two years later she rescued a fourteen year old boy from himself. It was this connection that had first interested Emily Aster in Lia Sorenson's child. After some hesitation, Emily had eventually agreed to keep Hitomi for the simple reason that, as she had explained to Paul in one of their many online conversations, Hitomi Sorenson had her grandfather's eyes.
Rena had wanted to open the safe immediately after patching up Ban's injuries – which, bizarrely, both of them seemed to think Ginji hadn't noticed. But Ban, with uncharacteristic good will, had insisted on waiting for Ginji.
Ginji smiled a little to himself, amused with his own foolishness, earning a suspicious frown from his partner. Good will nothing, he chuckled inwardly, as he realized what Ban's real motivations must have been. Ban-chan had just wanted to make sure there wasn't another bomb rigged into the safe. Well, that was alright too. At least it meant he appreciated Ginji's abilities, and that wasn't something Ban admitted very often. Usually he insulted his powers with taunts like 'electric eel' or some other equally inane nickname.
Nothing felt off about the safe, however, and after a few minutes, Ban used Snake Bite on the electronic lock, crushing its insides, cursing at the minor shock that served to reprimand him for his presumptuousness.
"Let's see what Paul thought was so damned valuable," Ban said, rubbing his hands together gleefully. Probably he thought there was cash, or something equally materialistic inside. Ginji wasn't so certain; Paul was like one of the jigsaw puzzles he compared their cases to, and he was pretty sure that there were a lot of pieces still missing.
"Huh?" Ban picked up a CD labeled 'Spring, '04' and turned it over, frowning with disgust. The whole safe was full of electronic storage devices – CDs, flash drives, memory cards, external hard drives. "I hope this is some damned valuable information," he grumbled.
"Here." Rena disappeared behind the counter, to reappear with a laptop. "You wouldn't believe how many computers he has lying around this place."
"Thanks, Rena-chan!" Ginji flashed a happy grin at her. She shrugged in acknowledgement and set the laptop down on the table in front of them. Ban caught her eyes, and she frowned.
"I know, I know. I'm going. Just…" she hesitated. "Just be careful, both of you. I've got a really bad feeling about this whole business."
Ban waved her off, insensitively blasé.
"We'll be alright, Rena-chan," Ginji assured her, after glaring at his cold-hearted partner. "Don't worry about us."
Still she looked rather anxious as she left the Honky Tonk, and threw a last, lingering glance in their direction before heading home.
"Here we go," Ban said, almost to himself, connecting the four externals into the four USB ports on Paul's laptop.
The first and third were obviously records for the Honky Tonk, and weren't especially interesting. The fourth was password protected, and Ban unplugged it with a curse, setting it aside to deal with later. That left the second, and it didn't take Ginji long to realize that every folder on that hard drive was duplicated in the other, smaller memory devices, as they were all labeled with a season and a year.
"Where should we start, Ban-chan?" Ginji wondered aloud, running a finger along the screen and the many files displayed there. The file names dated back six years, making twenty-four files altogether, and when Ban opened the one labeled for the past winter, he groaned when he saw that it had been further divided into months. Each month contained a number of word, image, and video files, and each was labeled by date.
"Anal bastard." Ban double clicked a video file dated December fourteenth, and Ginji leaned in closer to get a better view.
It didn't start playing automatically; evidently the default for Paul's media player was 'pause,' but that was alright. He and Ban were content to study the pretty woman for a few minutes before clicking play.
She had masses and masses of thick, dark blonde hair that fell in soft, curled layers all the way to the small of her back. Big green eyes, obviously western, tilted slightly downward toward the bridge of her sharp, narrow nose. These and the half-smile on her small, bow-shaped mouth, gave her a pixie-like appearance, an impression made all the stronger by the flimsy, baby pink chemise she wore. After drinking their fill of the pretty woman, Ban started the video.
"The flowers are beautiful, Paul, some of the prettiest you've ever sent me." She wrapped her arms around herself, smiling happily, and looked off to her right. Following her gaze, Ginji could see a big arrangement of white roses and evergreens, and the small, star-shaped flowers the delivery girl had pointed out.
"They're so Christmassy – I can't wait to get home and spend the holiday with you. My assignment ends in…" she glanced at her watch, "four days, sixteen hours, forty-two minutes, and thirty-three seconds. Not that I'm counting." She grinned, eyes sparkling mischievously.
"I'm hoping for something naughty this Christmas, but I guess you knew that, or you wouldn't have sent my present early." She tugged the satiny fabric of her gown. "I really don't know why you buy me this kind of stuff, you know; it never stays on for very long when we're together, and when we're apart, what's the point? Unless," she frowned with mock severity, "unless you really get them for your own enjoyment. In which case I feel entirely justified in asking for another present."
Suddenly her eyes went wide. "Oh, damn!" A white, terrycloth robe, embroidered with pink flowers shot across the room, and she hurried into it. Wondering briefly who'd been in the room with her, Ginji watched bemused as she ran to the door, which occupied the far right of the screen. Evidently there had been a knock that he hadn't heard over the video.
A jumble of foreign words tumbled out her mouth to the small child who had appeared at her door. The dark-headed little boy smiled happily, hugged her, presented his cheek for a kiss, and toddled off.
Smiling affectionately at her now-closed door, she chuckled softly to herself.
"He's a sweet one, he is. Makes me wish." She turned back to the camera, but there was a faint trace of sadness in her smile now. "Speaking of kids, Paul, you haven't told me about Ban-kun in awhile. I may not be keeping him anymore, but you know I like to keep tabs on my kids, and that one in particular. So 'fess up, are you still starving my Ban-kun?"
Through this little speech, Ban had stiffened, but didn't stop the video. Ginji gasped – several times – but he didn't say anything either, just watched his partner and waited for Ban to collect his thoughts.
"It's unfortunate he got his father's business sense," she continued, "but as long as he has better taste in women, I'll be happy. That crazy bitch reaches out from the grave to piss me off, I think. You'd think I'd have gotten over that by now, but things still start rattling around me every time I think about it too much."
Tossing her head violently, she flung golden curls side to side in a wide arc that spanned almost the width of the queen-sized bed she sat upon. "No, no, not tonight. Tonight I want to think about something else."
She'd mussed her hair, but she didn't seem to mind, if she noticed at all. "Just a few more days. I can't wait; these people don't know the first thing about coffee. She hugged herself again, looking entirely adorable in her fuzzy white robe. "I miss you, Paul, I always do, but every now and again, I miss your coffee even more."
Pulling her knees up to her breast, she pouted and went on, "I miss drinking it with you in the morning, miss fighting with you over the paper, miss the way I never get the mugs put in the washer, because you've always got something to better occupy my time." A wry smile touched her mouth, and something humorous sparked in her eyes.
"Ban-chan, we should turn this off." Ban ignored him.
"Listen to me, getting all sentimental. The first week and the last are always the worst. Ah, well. I'll be home on the ten o'clock flight on the nineteenth. Is Ban turning nineteen this week? My God, I'm getting old." Slipping her hands behind her head, she kneaded her neck for a moment. A surprising amount of muscle shifted in her forearms as she did so. "This old lady is going to bed now. I'm taking Christopher shopping for gifts in the morning, even though I told his father it was dangerous to let him out of the house until after Randolph's trial." She shook her head. "People can be so stupid, sometimes. I just hope we don't run into any trouble."
She smiled then, a sweet, gentle smile that softened every angular pixie feature into something wonderfully lovely, and Ginji knew immediately she'd never intended that smile to be seen by anyone but the man she'd sent her video to. It was the blissful smile of a woman in love, and he felt ashamed to receive it from someone he didn't even know.
"Turn it off, Ban-chan," Ginji said, voice choked, but Ban's eyes were glued to the screen, taking in every minute detail of the girl, her appearance, her room, her movements, everything.
"Ban-chan."
"I love you, Wan Paul. Say a prayer for me. I've got a feeling I might need it tomorrow." A tiny hand, no bigger than a child's hand, gently brushed the screen with its round fingertips. "Goodnight."
A slim golden band had adorned one of the fingers that touched the screen in farewell. Ginji shivered; it was her left hand, and she wore the ring on her third finger.
Ginji closed the video with a violent click. "We shouldn't have watched that, Ban-chan,"
"Aster," Ban mused, tapping a thoughtful finger on the table, oblivious. "Aster, Aster, what could that mean?"
"Ban-chan!"
Ginji didn't get angry very often, but he felt guilty, and guilt was a feeling he didn't handle especially well. "Ban-chan, I told you we shouldn't have watched that!"
"It's not like she did a strip-tease for him, Ginji," Ban replied, snorting. "You worry too much."
"It was private!"
Now Ban was getting irritable. "Do you want to help Paul or not, Ginji?" Ban demanded. "Cuz if you do, I don't have any better ideas right now. That bomb wiped out any other leads we might have had. What's in these files may be our only shot at finding him."
Ginji stared at him helplessly.
Ban cursed. "I don't like it any more than you do, Ginji – I wish we'd never gotten mixed up in his mess, with his secret wife and twice-damned exploding apartment, but we are involved." He frowned darkly. "At least, I am. I know I've never met that woman. I want to know why she thinks she knows me."
Still upset, Ginji looked away.
Sighing, Ban ran his hands roughly through his spiky hair. "I'll try to skip over the more intimate parts, okay? But that's really the best we can do, if we're going to find out what's happened to Paul."
"Assuming his disappearance has anything to do with 'Aster,'" Ginji pointed out glumly. "Maybe we should start with the latest stuff and work our way backward, instead of trying to find the beginning. That way we won't see more than we have to."
Ban relaxed back into his seat. "Sounds good to me." He found the latest folder, opened it, and clicked on the most recently dated file, a word document.
Dearest Paul,
Since Lia's death, Hitomi has been inconsolable. She's so like him, sometimes, so standoffish, so touch-me-not. She sleeps only when she's too tired to stay awake, eats only when I force her to, and barely speaks at all. I have to get her out of Germany, but I know that bastard's watching every airport, every train station, daring me to make a move. He's pinned me down pretty well in Dusseldorf for the time being, but thankfully hasn't found any of the Keeper safehouses here. If you get the chance, thank Nanao for me – those miniature bombs of hers turned out to be wonderful diversions. I'm going to try to get Hitomi to eat something – please, please try not to worry about me too much, okay? I am a professional, after all. Hitomi and I will be fine, so don't do anything hasty.
Yours, always,
Emily
Ban pushed his sunglasses back with the middle finger of his right hand and turned a grim, icy blue eyes on his partner. "What do you want to bet Paul did something hasty?"