Warnings: soulmates, soulparents, Izuku has a quirk, aizawa/izuku/Tsukauchi, nightmares, suicidal thoughts
A priest stepped through the door far back in the wall near the entrance of the cabaret. He closed it quickly, adjusting his eyes to the dim light of the long, narrow hallway. His right arm was stiff beneath the folds of his white caftan, his left diagonally across his waist, also under the sheer white fabric.
Down the corridor, no more than twenty-five feet away a startled man sprang from the wall, his right hand plunging beneath his jacket to yank a large, heavy-caliber revolver from an unseen shoulder holster. The holy man nodded slowly, impassively, repeatedly, as he moved forward with graceful steps appropriate to a religious procession.
"Amita-fo, Amita-fo," he said softly, over and over again as he approached the man.
"Everything is peaceful, all is in peace, the spirits will it."
"Jou matyeh?"
The guard was beside a door; he shoved the ugly weapon forward and continued in a guttural Cantonese bred in the northern settlements.
"Are you lost, priest? What are you doing here? Get out! This is no place for you!"
"Amita-fo, Amita-fo …"
"Get out! Now!" The guard had no chance. Swiftly the priest pulled a razor-thin, double-edged knife from the folds at his waist.
He slashed the man's wrist, half severing the hand with the gun from the guard's arm, then arced the blade surgically across the man's throat; air and blood erupted as the head snapped back in a mass of shining red; he fell to the floor, a corpse. Without hesitation, the killer-priest slid the blemished knife into the cloth of his caftan where it held, and from under the right side of his robe he withdrew a thin-framed Uzi machine gun, its curved magazine holding more ammunition than he would need.
He raised his foot and crashed it into the door with the strength of a mountain cat, racing inside to find what he knew he would find. Five men—Zhongguo ren—were sitting around a table with pots of tea and short glasses of potent whisky near each; there were no written papers anywhere in sight, no notes or memoranda, only ears and watchful eyes. And as each pair of eyes looked up in shock the faces were contorted with panic.
Two well-dressed negotiators plunged their hands inside their well-tailored jackets while they spun out of the chairs; another lunged under the table as the remaining two sprang up screaming and raced futilely into silk-covered walls, spinning around in desperation, seeking pardons yet knowing none would be forthcoming. A shattering fusillade of bullets ripped into the Zhongguo ren.
Blood gushed from fatal wounds as skulls were pierced and eyes were punctured, mouths torn apart, bright red in muted screams of death. The walls and the floor and the polished table glistened sickeningly with the bloody evidence of death. Everywhere. It was over.
The killer surveyed his work. Satisfied, he knelt down by a large, stagnant pool of blood and moved his index finger through it. He then pulled out a square of dark cloth from his left sleeve and spread it over his handiwork. He rose to his feet and rushed out of the room, unbuttoning the white caftan as he ran down the dim hallway; the robe was open by the time he reached the door to the cabaret. He removed the razorlike knife from the cloth and shoved it into a scabbard on his belt.
Then, holding the folds of cloth together, his hood in place, the lethal weapon secure at his side, he pulled the door back and walked inside, into the brawling chaos that showed no sign of lessening. But then why should it be different? He had left it barely thirty seconds ago and his man was well trained.
"Faai-di!" The shout came from the burly, unshaven peasant from Canton; he was ten feet away, overturning another table and striking a match, dropping it on the floor.
"The police will be here any moment! The bartender just reached a phone, I saw him!" The killer-priest ripped the caftan away from his body and the hood from his head.
In the wild revolving lights his face looked as macabre as any in the frenzied rock group. Heavy makeup outlined his eyes, white lines defining the shape of each, and his face was an unnatural brown.
"Go in front of me!" he commanded the peasant. He dropped his costume and the Uzi on the floor next to the door while removing a pair of thin surgical gloves; he shoved them into his flannel trousers.
For a cabaret in the Golden Mile to summon the police was not a decision easily arrived at. There were heavy fines for poor management, stiff penalties for endangering tourists. The police knew these risks and responded quickly when they were taken.
The killer ran behind the peasant from Canton who joined the panicked crowd at the entrance screaming to get out. The coarsely dressed brawler was a bull; bodies in front of him fell away under the force of his blows. Guard and killer burst through the door and into the street, where another crowd had gathered shrieking questions and epithets and cries of bad joss—misfortune for the establishment. They threaded their way through the excited onlookers and were joined by the short, muscular Chinese who had waited outside.
He grabbed the arm of his defrocked charge and pulled his priest into the narrowest of alleys, where he took out two towels from under his tunic. One was soft and dry, the other encased in plastic—it was warm and wet and perfumed. The assassin gripped the wet towel and began rubbing it over his face, sinking it around and into the sockets of his eyes and across the exposed flesh of his neck. He reversed the cloth and repeated the process with even greater pressure, scrubbing his temples and his hairline until his white skin was apparent.
He then dried himself with the second towel, smoothed his dark hair, and straightened the regimental tie that fell on the cream-colored shirt under his dark blue blazer.
"Jau!" he ordered his two companions.
They ran and disappeared in the crowds. And a lone, well-dressed Occidental walked out into the strip of Oriental pleasures. Inside the cabaret the excited manager was berating the bartender who had called the jing cha; the fines would be on his fuck-fuck head! For the riot had inexplicably subsided, leaving the customers bewildered. Head boys and waiters were mollifying the patrons, patting shoulders and clearing away the debris, while straightening tables and producing new chairs and dispensing free glasses of whisky.
The rock group concentrated on the current favorites, and as swiftly as the order of the evening had been disrupted it was restored. With luck, thought the tuxedoed manager, the explanation that an impetuous bartender had mistaken a belligerent drunk for something far more serious would be acceptable to the police.
Suddenly, all thoughts of fines and official harassment were swept away as his eyes were drawn to a clump of white fabric on the floor across the room—in front of the door to the inner offices. White cloth, pure white—the priest? The door! The laoban! The conference!
His breath short, his face drenched with sweat, the obese manager raced between the tables to the discarded caftan. He knelt down, his eyes wide, his breathing now suspended, as he saw the dark barrel of a strange weapon protruding from beneath the folds of white. And what made him choke on his barely formed terror was the sight of tiny specks and thin streaks of shiny, undried blood soiling the cloth.
"Go hai matyeh?" The question was asked by a second man in a tuxedo, but without the status conferred by a cummerbund—in truth the manager's brother and first assistant.
"Oh, damn the Christian Jesus!" he swore under his breath as his brother gathered up the odd-looking gun in the spotted caftan.
"Come!" ordered the manager, getting to his feet and heading for the door.
"The police!" objected the brother, "One of us should speak to them, calm them, do what we can."
"It may be that we can do nothing but give them our heads! Quickly!"
Inside the dimly lit corridor the proof was there. The slain guard lay in a river of his own blood, his weapon gripped by a hand barely attached to his wrist. Within the conference room itself, the proof was complete. Five bloodied corpses were in spastic disarray, one specifically, shockingly, the focus of the manager's horrified interest. He approached the body and the punctured skull. With his handkerchief he wiped away the blood and stared at the face.
"We are dead," he whispered. "Kowloon is dead, Hong Kong dead. All is dead."
"What?"
"This man is the Vice-Premier of the People's Republic, successor to the Chairman himself."
"Here! Look!" The first-assistant brother lunged toward the body of the dead laoban.
Alongside the riddled, bleeding corpse was a black bandanna. It was lying flat, the fabric with the curlicues of white discolored by blotches of red. The brother picked it up and gasped at the writing in the circle of blood underneath: JASON BOURNE. The manager sprang across the floor.
"Great Christian Jesus!" he uttered, his whole body trembling. "He's come back. The assassin has come back to Asia! Jason Bourne! He's come back!"
Izuku's POV
Dreamscape
He felt rushing cold water envelop him, swallowing him, sucking him under, and twisting him in circles, then propelling him up to the surface—only to gasp a single breath of air. A gasp and he was under again. And there was heat, a strange moist heat at his temple that seared through the freezing water that kept swallowing him, a fire where no fire should burn.
There was ice, too; an icelike throbbing in his stomach and his legs and his chest, oddly warmed by the cold sea around him. He felt these things, acknowledging his own panic as he felt them. He could see his own body turning and twisting, arms and feet working frantically against the pressures of the whirlpool. He could feel, think, see, perceive panic and struggle—yet strangely there was peace.
It was the calm of the observer, the uninvolved observer, separated from the events, knowing of them but not essentially involved. Then another form of panic spread through him, surging through the heat and the ice and the uninvolved recognition.
He could not submit to peace! Not yet! It would happen any second now; he was not sure what it was, but it would happen. He had to be there! He kicked furiously, clawing at the heavy walls of water above, his chest burning. He broke surface, thrashing to stay on top of the black swells.
Climb up! Climb up! A monstrous rolling wave accommodated; he was on the crest, surrounded by pockets of foam and darkness. Nothing. Turn! Turn! It happened. The explosion was massive; he could hear it through the clashing waters and the wind, the sight and the sound somehow his doorway to peace. The sky lit up like a fiery diadem and within that crown of fire, objects of all shapes and sizes were blown through the light into the outer shadows.
He had won. Whatever it was, he had won. Suddenly he was plummeting downward again, into an abyss again. He could feel the rushing waters crash over his shoulders, cooling the white-hot heat at his temple, warming the ice-cold incisions in his stomach and his legs and.… His chest. His chest was in agony!
He had been struck—the blow crushing, the impact sudden and intolerable. It happened again!
Let me alone. Give me peace. And again! And he clawed again, and kicked again … until he felt it. A thick, oily object that moved only with the movements of the sea. He could not tell what it was, but it was there and he could feel it, hold it.
Hold it! It will ride you to peace. To the silence of darkness … and peace.
End of Dreamscape
He woke to the taste of blood and wild eyes. It wasn't the first time he had such a dream since he lost his memory. However it was the first time it had been so vivid.
A year had passed since he woke up in a rundown illegal clinic. When he woke up they said that a fishing boat had picked him up. As the owners were friends they brought him to the clinic. The doctor there had done his best to treat Izuku but there was only so much he could. None of which helped the mental state in which he found himself in.
No memories. His past was completely erases as part of the trauma he endured. Washburn, the aging doctor had said such a thing had been somewhat common before quirks. That he may or may not ever get back his memories. If he was lucky they would come back completely. If he wasn't they might not come back at all.
It turned out he was really unlucky or at least that's how it appeared to him. His memories returned not in full but in segments in his dreams. Like the one he had just woken from.
A lot had changed from that day a year ago. At the same time very little had as well. He had a name now. A real name that proved he existed and was not a ghost. But he was still missing a lot of his memories.
Sadly for him that was the bright side of things. On the other side he found out he was hunted. Hunted by men who supposedly were once his allies. They spoke in riddles kept trying to blame him for things he didn't remember. For things that may have been his fault but he couldn't confirm.
Then there was Alexander Conklin who said he killed a man named Jacob Webb. Supposedly the man had been like a brother to him. It just didn't bring out any memories from him. Though this was one crime he knew for a fact that he was innocent in.
When Jacob had been killed Izuku was in Paris, searching for any kind of answers. A place that held some answers but even more questions. Still in their eyes there was no one else it could be. They found his fingerprints. As if he would be so careless.
Izuku froze at the thought. His body was stiff as a board on his bed. Where had that come from?
The way it was spoken was familiar. The side of him they called Jason Bourne. Created to hunt Carlos the Jackal, Bourne to the world was a ruthless killer for hire. Izuku in his slow progress of piecing together his past found out Jason Bourne only took credit for the killings. If that was all he would not have the skills that he did.
Izuku had skills that at first he could not explain. One was able to see and calculate the risks of any room he entered. To kill without hesitation or remorse, something he had proven on more than one occasion. Never without reason however since he lost his memories. Always in protection of himself or anyone around him.
The final side of him made even the most ruthless of killers pale in comparison. A side of his mind that would not hesitate to kill. Delta, a killer born from war and the intelligence agencies. His deadlier skills all came from this side. One that very rarely came to the surface.
So far it only happened once since he lost his memories. It happened in a graveyard outside of Paris. There he tried to convince Conklin that he lost his memories. Something he failed in and the agent tried to kill him. Izuku was barely able to refrain from killing the man.
Rubbing a hand down his face he sat up. Grey green eyes trailed to the marks across his arms. Scars littered his body some from fire others from gunshots or knives.
He had two tattoos. A Yin Yang symbol with a koi fish in the middle that took up most of his back. The greek sign of Delta across his right bicep was the second. How and when he got them was still missing.
Izuku had taken to always wearing sleeved shirts to avoid anyone seeing them. While he got weird looks during the summer it was better for his safety. The only one who knew of them now was Giran.
Beside him, his phone buzzed and a familiar number popped up. Speak of the devil and he shall appear. A quick glance at the time as he answered told him it was an ungodly hour in the morning. Must be important if Giran was willingly awake right now.
Dispensing with any pleasantries Giran asked his voice sharp, "Are you in Kowloon right now?"
Izuku snapped back, "Why the fuck would I be," realization hit him only a second later, "What's happened?"
"Come by the shop. Don't let anyone follow you. I'll explain when you get here."
"I'll be there in ten."
Then the line clicked dead.