Title: Cold November Rain [part 6/?]
Book 1 of "Redirecting Destiny" and prequel to "Romantic Resolutions"
Author: Enigma
Series: Weiss Kreuz
Written: January, 2002
Rating: R
Pairings: (Yohji + Ken + Aya) (Omi + Nagi) (Brad + Schu)
Category: Dark! Yaoi Angst Action/Adventure Violence Blood Squick Language Romance. AU-OOC.
Archive: fanfiction.net [author: "E-sama the Llama"], Scripta Manent: http://digilander.iol.it/sakaba/Home.html
Spoilers: None, safe for new viewers as well as old.
Warnings: dark! yaoi, heavy angst, action/adventure, graphic violence, large quantities of blood, squick: medical and other, coarse language, agonized and overwrought romance, rare touches of sap, cigarettes, destiny, cruel cliffhangers, original characters. AU-OOC.
Disclaimer: "Weiss Kreuz" is the property of Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiss. This unauthorized work of fanfiction is intended for entertainment only; kindly do not sue me.
Notes: When Ken falls in battle, how can the other members of Weiss cope with the guilt and blame that they all seem to share and will he survive in spite of the odds against him?
++ date and time reference within the storyline beginning with the day of the battle ++
{{telepathic speech}}
*****
++ day: 1. time: 0830-0955 hours ++
*****
When Yohji returned to the waiting room, he was surprised to find Aya and Manx talking with a doctor he hadn't seen before. Clearing his throat nervously and pushing his sunglasses up to the top of his head, the jade-eyed assassin stated quietly, "I'm back."
Aya and Manx turned their attention to him and they both frowned unhappily seeing that he was alone.
"Where is he?" The woman asked without preamble.
"I lost him," Yohji answered apologetically, seeing no point in trying to conceal the truth.
"It figures," the swordsman growled softly, then added, "We'll deal with *that* in a moment, Kudou. This is Dr. Egami, he's the head of Ken's surgical team and is giving us a report on his condition."
"Oh?" Emerald eyes glimmered with interest and Yohji extended a hand to shake the older man's in greeting as he asked, "How is he?"
"Not good," the physician answered then summarized, "As I was telling your friends here, the patient is in critical condition and we're not even halfway through with the surgery yet. We've confirmed at least five bullet wounds, two of which the projectiles had clear entry and exit wounds which were fairly straightforward to treat. The other three, however, are still giving my team quite a run for their money which is where I was in my explanation already so allow me to resume unless you have any questions so far?"
Frowning slightly, Yohji shook his head and asked simply, "Did the tourniquets on the arm and leg wounds make much of a difference, doctor?" Seeing the looks of confusion on the others' faces he added with a sad expression, "I think it might help Omi to handle this better if we can at least tell him that his efforts made a difference before we even got here, you know?"
"Yes," Aya unexpectedly spoke up supportively, "I agree. Well? Did they, Dr. Egami?"
Nodding firmly, the man agreed, "Most assuredly so. I'm certain he would've bled to death without both of them, but let me please move on to other matters so that I can return to the OR. Things are far from over in there."
"Certainly, doctor," Manx said noting the looks of relief on the two Weiss assassin's faces now that they had at least a tiny bit of good news for their missing teammate. "And feel free to keep it short if you must, I'm sure that we'd all sooner see Ken getting the best care possible rather than you standing here talking to us."
"I understand," the Asian man smiled in return and then proceeded to debrief them on the condition of the youth who had been so brutally gunned down earlier that day.
*****
After almost fifteen minutes of explanation, questions, and answers, Egami left the three shaken Kritiker agents who each found they needed a few minutes of silence to absorb the information they had been given.
Fingering an unlit cigarette longingly, Yohji commented quietly, "I had no idea that someone could be trashed that badly and live."
"I know," Manx replied, shaking her head and pushing bright red hair over one shoulder and out of her way as she added, "But it could be worse, I guess. He could already be dead."
"He *did* die more than once already." Aya remarked darkly before looking up to gaze balefully at his lover and he snarled acidly, "After all, isn't *that* what he meant by saying Ken went into cardiac arrest on the table twice while they were repairing the punctured lung and the torn exocardial lining?"
An expression of infinite sadness overcame Yohji's elegant features and he nodded, refusing to enter into another round of blame and recrimination no matter how much Aya seemed to feel they both deserved it. With a deep sigh he answered, "Yeah, I guess so, but to know that they're in there right now, cutting what's left of one of his kidneys out and throwing it away is kind of freaking me out right now. I mean, I remember what Egami said about how Ken can survive with just the other one if it heals up all right, but still." He raised his head and peered at them both and asked, "Is it just me or does the idea that an athletic guy like him could be facing a lifetime of dialysis while he waits for a kidney donor bother you, too?"
"Of course it does, Yohji," Manx said with more gentleness than she had granted either of the men practically since her arrival after being awakened by Omi's predawn phone call. She reached out to place a warm and reassuring hand on the man's knee and she added, "But I'm more worried about the damage to his spine. The bullet that grazed his spinal column didn't sever it as it would have if it had been even a few millimeters closer, but as long as it's damaged at all, there's the possibility of paralysis that we can't overlook."
The two men seemed to sink in on themselves a little upon this worst case scenario being reiterated, then the scarlet-haired one seemed to come to a realization he didn't care for. With an angry scowl, Aya said quietly, "If Ken's going to be trapped in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, you do realize he'd rather be dead, don't you? He won't hesitate to finish the job later if that's how it turns out."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Yohji answered and looked up to see his lover's violet gaze aimed directly at him cold, calculating, and looking as if he'd been down this road before. The older man turned his head away and said quietly, "What do you want *me* to do about it, Aya? You know I'd undo it if I could, but it's too late and all we can do now is hope."
"Oh really?" The katana-wielding assassin asked sarcastically, "Are you so sure, Kudou? Why don't you think about it a little harder and see if there isn't *some* way for you to make up for your mistake after all?"
Yohji's patience snapped and in his anguish, he turned tortured jade green eyes on his lover and he spat, "Damn it all to hell, Fujimiya! Don't you think I'm already racking my brain for solutions here? Shit, if I could go back in time and take every last one of those bullets *for* him, I would, but unless you're H. G. Wells and you've got a time machine I can use, just get off my back and stop *judging* me!!" He surged to his feet and strode away, angry with Aya for questioning him, angry with himself for failing, and angry at the world for letting it all happen in the first place.
Aya jumped to his own feet and intended to go after him, but was stopped cold by a strong feminine hand on his wrist and a commanding voice. "Let him go, Abyssinian."
"No!" Aya snarled and tried to wrench his arm free yet failed. Glaring down at the woman who remained in her chair, he demanded, "Release me, Manx! I'm going after that goddamned arrogant prick! He can't get away with this!"
"Get away with *what*, Aya?" Manx asked in a cold voice, tired of trying to make the two anguished souls see reason. "What is it you think that Yohji's 'getting away with' anyway? He feels as guilty about all of this as you do if not more so. Now that Bombay's missing he blames himself for that, too, when in reality, neither of you are to blame."
The man glared down at her, yet stopped trying to pull away and she added more warmly, "Give him some time to cool down, Aya. Maybe Omi will come back soon and if he does, he's going to need both of you to support him while we wait to see how it goes for Ken."
Shoulders slumping slightly, the man nodded then asked, "What do we do if Omi doesn't come back on his own? He doesn't have a cell phone in those borrowed scrubs and our headsets from the mission are still in Yohji's car which was probably towed away anyway. There's no way to reach him."
Manx smirked ever so slightly then answered an unasked question, "Yes, Yohji's car *was* towed away, but it'll be back at the Koneko by tonight. I had a Kritiker undercover operative take care of it for you. It'll be decontaminated and all evidence of the killings erased by the time you see it again. As for Omi, I'd assume he'll either return here or go back to the flowershop. I don't know where else he might go under the circumstances."
Aya sighed deeply and agreed, "Neither do I, Manx. I'm not an optimist by nature, but I guess simply hoping for the best is all we can do, ne?"
"It seems that way to me," the woman answered then rose to leave the room in search of a more private location to report to Persia. She knew that she needed to tell the commander of Kritiker pointblank that his best team needed to be put on inactive duty indefinitely as well as potentially needing a replacement for one of its members should Siberian die as it appeared he might. It was a conversation Manx wasn't looking forward to having.
Alone in the waiting room, Aya allowed himself to slump down into an overstuffed chair and simply glare at the clock on the wall as he waited for the next scene in this soul-shattering drama to unfold.
At the same time, outside in the chill November air, Yohji gave in to a bad habit from his past and simply smoked mindlessly, long fingers pulling a new cigarette from the pack at random intervals as the sun slowly tried to reclaim its spot in the sky and failed.
*****
More than an hour passed by as Ken's surgery progressed and it seemed as if the world was too busy waiting for that to be completed to do much of anything else.
Even though he had become chilled to the bone standing in the unprotected smoking area and making his way through the better part of a pack of cigarettes, Yohji was still startled when he heard a familiar voice ask, "Mind if I join you, Yohji?"
Turning to give his lover a glance that carried with it all of the older man's fears and insecurities, Yohji finally simply shrugged and said in a tobacco-roughened voice, "Sure, why not, Aya?" He sighed deeply and tossed away the butt of his last smoke, a pathetic thing consisting of several centimeters of ash clinging to a filter since he'd forgotten he was holding it as it burned.
Aya moved to lean against the wall beside his elder lover and then sighed deeply before saying, "There's nothing new on Ken and we still haven't heard from Omi. Manx called the flowershop, but Momoe hasn't seen him." [1] He took a deep breath and did something he hated, admit that he was wrong. "We're going nowhere fast here, Yohji, and arguing between us isn't helping."
"That's true," the blond man admitted then shook the pack of cigarettes peering into it to see how many were left. As he dug one out, he asked in a soul-weary voice, "So, what do we do about it now? We can't do anything for Ken at the moment, but there's gotta be something we can do about Omiitchi before he hurts himself."
A pale hand reached over and unexpectedly relieved Yohji of his package of cigarettes, then Aya shook one free and brought it to his lips before leaning over to silently ask for a light as the taller man flicked his lighter on for himself. Startled but not shocked, the emerald-eyed man granted the request, noting that if his scarlet-haired lover was indulging his exceedingly rare desire for nicotine, he was truly disturbed by the current situation.
Dragging in a long puff of smoke and then coughing slightly due to inexperience, the shorter of the two men asked thoughtfully, "Who would Omi turn to when he's upset other than us or Manx? Persia, maybe, but he'd have let us know about it, so, who else?"
Yohji shrugged slightly, then stopped dead in the act of adjusting his sunglasses and exclaimed, "That's it! I know who he'd go to if he could, but since he can't, he'd use email!" His disjointed words made no sense to his companion, but it didn't stop him from adding a command to action. "Come on, let's go!" He grabbed the cigarette from his own lips and tossed it aside before doing the same to Aya's and bodily dragging the man back inside the building.
As they dashed through the waiting room which was empty since Manx had gone off to get coffee in the hopes of luring Yohji back inside, Aya tugged his arm free of Yohji's hand and followed willingly commenting in a guilty tone, "Of course! *Nagi*! But how do we reach him?"
Chortling to himself and feeling much more in control of the situation than he had since the moment gunfire had erupted before dawn, the older man answered, "I've got a mind like a pointless steeltrap for some shit, Aya. I was bugging Omiitchi after school one day when he got IMed by the kid and I made a mental note of the alias he uses. All we need is a computer terminal and we're good to go!"
Shaking his head and sending scarlet earlocks dancing across the front of his scrubs, Aya remarked, "Yohji, you never fail to amaze me at the strangest moments." As they approached a public access computer terminal set amidst a row of coin-operated telephones, he asked, "Are you sure we'll be able to reach him on that account? What if it's blocked to anyone but Omi?"
Yohji snorted angrily and yanked out his wallet, grabbing the first credit card he saw and shoving it into the payment slot that activated the machine, bringing it on-line rapidly and signing in under his own private screen name and growling softly, "Hell, I never even thought of that. Well, let's give it a shot and see what happens, okay?"
Aya shrugged then agreed, "It can't hurt." As the connection went through, he added more softly in a voice that promised violence to anyone who would dare to harm those he cared for, "And if we can't reach the kid this way, I think it just might be high time one of us pays a visit to that penthouse Schwarz thinks we don't know about. If Omi isn't here with us or at home at the Koneko, he might've been confused enough to go there and who knows *what* amount of hell he could be in by now if those bastards Nagi lives with get their hands on him."
Nodding, the wire-wielding assassin growled in return, "Yeah, I'd like to think that his boyfriend can protect him better than that, but *we've* let him down already so I'm not assuming anyone else can handle it better at this point." Entering the strange screen name he recalled seeing on Omi's computer, Yohji found himself praying to a god he didn't believe in that this strategy would work and he held his breath and waited.
Halfway across the city, a computerized chime rang out and tried to rouse an unconscious boy then patiently began a timed sequence of reminder rings as per Nagi's customized communication program.
Unfortunately, a single chime wasn't enough to do the job, and it would be several nerve-wracking minutes before the two anxious Weiss assassins would discover if they would even get a response from the only person who could've found their missing teammate. And as they waited, somewhere deep in the bowels of the hospital, a previously occupied hiding spot beneath a stairwell suddenly became vacant as Omi acted on a rash decision of his own.
An agonized young man dressed in surgical scrubs hurried away from the house of healing, vanishing into the press of humanity that Tokyo became during midday without a destination in mind and nothing but guilt and shame in his heart. Pointless self-hatred transformed into mindless action and the cerulean-eyed teen was more lost than he had ever been before in his life, deliberately leaving behind those who cared for him in favor of being swept away in the crowds, not caring what happened to himself in the least.
*****
To be continued.
Author's Notes:
[1] This is a reference to the "sweet old lady" who runs the Koneko while the boys aren't there. I tried to confirm the name in my artbooks, etc, but I kept hitting kanji or worse and gave up. If you know differently, let me know, okay?
Full Author's Notes to Run at Conclusion.
Please be advised: Parts 5 & 6 will be posted together.
This evening's posting run is dedicated to all those who wrote me notes after the angst and gruesome details of Parts 3 & 4, a list which includes but is not limited to: Yanagi-sen, bearilou, Ami-chan, Yachii, Ryoko, and Rubious.
Oh, and over at fanfiction.net, there's been a veritable explosion of comments in the last 24 hours, all of which brought the greatest smile to my face! Yanagi-sen left me a note there, too, (cuddles dear friend gratefully), Mr. Peabody dropped by again, e.e. sent me part-by-part feedback that means *so* much!, and the lovely Lemon Princess to whom the original story was dedicated left a lengthy and heartwarming note. Others who left comments were: Shonenlee, Silvi-chan, casey, ladyicecubes, and eeyore! Thanks all, and feel free to let me know what you think of the latest additions, okay?
Thanks for continuing to encourage me and if I hadn't been up all night with Lauren after a truly horrific nightmare hit her last night, Melpomene would've gone back to work on Part 21 today. As it is, I now have an all-new, incredibly sickening mental image courtesy of my twelve year old daughter's subconscious to throw at some unsuspecting bishounen in the future which is almost as frightening as Dr. Egami's summary of Ken's injuries! Too bad none of the Weiss boys really *wants* to permanently lose the use of his legs. I wonder if Nagi's tired of being able to walk?
{evil laugh}
All foreshadowing aside since that's an idea that isn't going to be used in *this* story, allow me to bid you adieu and hope that your life is far less angsty than that of my characters or my family!
Be Well!
~~~E-sama the Llama~~~
(whose addiction to angst is showing to his WK friends in its truest colors for the first time and he's grateful to them for trusting him to continue, or are they really saying "continue or die, llama!"? {gleeful yet exhausted smile})
Parts 5 & 6 posted on 26 January 2002.