Endlessly White
An Aya Shortfic
By Ryuuen

Warnings: Angst, language. That's it. No shounen-ai. Proud of me yet?
note:: If you haven't seen episode 7, "Returning Memory"/"Entfuhren", or at least know what happened in it, you might not want to read this, since it is mentioned quite a bit.

A/N: Just a short little fic about Aya. Nothing to it, really. Funny. I wrote a humor fic. Please read and review!!
NOTE: I have nothing against Yohji. I love that guy to *death* (just like I do the rest of WeiB, plus Shwarz). This is merely my interpretation of Aya, and how he thinks. So don't take it personally, if you're a Yohji fan. I just didn't get the impression that he and Aya got along. I didn't think Aya liked him much... ^^;;;
ENDLESSLY WHITE
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BEEP BEEP BEEEEE~EEEEEP SLAM.

The alarmclock was silenced with a single sleepy blow, and the pale hand hovered over it for a moment, almost too tired to find it's way back to it's owner. After a while, though, the hand returned to the bed, ducked back under the covers with the rest of him. The blankets were thick; there were three of them. He would never admit to the others how cold he got some nights, but it was Hell to get up in the morning. He was just naturally cold. What was it 'Kaasan used to say about that? Oh, yeah.. that he had no blood. The thought would have brought a smile to his face if he wasn't so goddamn cold. Instead of moving, he huddled under the covers, the only part of him revealed being his face, since although he had a thing for lots of blankets, he found it extremely hard to comfortably breathe while underneath them.

They can deal with me being late today, he thought. I've dealt with Yohji, they can deal with me today.

He tried not to look at the clock, knowing that it was nearly nine, and he was always up at nine. It was just too goddamn cold to be out of bed at this hour. In the midst of winter, the flowershop got quite a lot of business, since people couldn't very well grow their own flowers this time of year, but it was bitterly cold all the time, and for some reason it always seemed to him that his room got the worst of it. He woke up freezing, spent the day wrapped up in a heavy sweater and playing with the thermostat until Yohji said he was trying to burn them alive (and the look on his face was worth doing it every single day.. never let it be said he didn't have a sense of humor), and then went to bed and huddled inside a cocoon of anywhere from three to five blankets, depending on how many spare blankets he could round up that weren't being used by the others. Or, if there were no extra blankets, he would ask Ken or Yohji if they had one in their room that they weren't using; he didn't ask Omi, that kid was as bad as he was in the cold, and also his main competition for the blankets. Yohji was like a polar bear, he loved the cold. He could swear the blonde would melt if the weather got too warm. Ken was actually the most normal of them: cold when it got cold, warm when it got warm, and never going to extremes like he, Omi, and Yohji did. Of course, in a lot of ways Ken was the most normal of them, he reflected a little bitterly, trying to wrap the blankets closer around him.

Huddled under the covers like a small animal in a burrow, he allowed his mind to wander. He wasn't quite awake yet, but he couldn't seem to fall back asleep. He hovered in a half-sleep, his mind touching lightly on random subjects, staying there only long enough for the next one to come up and capture his attention for the moment. It didn't really register in his mind how long he lay there, thinking anything, but he knew it had to be a long time, because by the time he came back to full (or somewhat full) wakefulness, he was starting to get a little bit of a headache, the kind he always got when he slept more than he usually did. He sighed at the stirrings of pain in his forehead, but made no move to get up. He was cold, and he still felt tired. Thus, he was not moving from this bed until Yohji came in here and tied him round the feet with his wire and dragged him out. 'Till then, he could get the rest he had been denying his body for years.. a day of just resting and doing nothing, rather than getting six or seven hours of sleep (less, if they had had a mission the night before) and then waking up, being busy all day, and then repeating the ritual. He just wanted rest. He never seemed to get enough anymore.

So, now content to stay exactly where he was and not move until someone made him, he rested his weary mind, deciding not to think about anything even remotly pertaining to missions, violence, or killing for at least the next hour. Nor would he think about his sister, because that chain of though inevitably ended up too close for comfort to the three he refused to think about. So instead he focused on his teammates. Gods, how he loved to drive them crazy. The best part of it, though, that made it all worthwhile, was that they didn't even know he was doing it. Then again, he didn't have to try. Not at all. Just being himself was enough to drive Yohji up a wall, endlessly frustrate Ken, and... well, he never really got too much of a reaction out of Omi. The kid just didn't react with anger or frustration to much of anything, short of taking away his computer, something he would never even think of doing, because he had seen the aftermath of what Omi did to Yohji when he got it into his head to kidnap the teen's precious electronic. That was before all of this business with Takatori, back only about two months after he himself had joined WeiB (he was the last of the four), and it had also been the first time any of them had heard him laugh, much to Omi's delight and Yohji's frustration.

With him, annoying Yohji wasn't just a passtime.. it seemed like more of a profession (okay, okay, so WeiB was his profession, but...). He just didn't get along with the womanizing blonde. He got along fine with Omi, and Ken too if you didn't count the occasional times when he got annoyed at him, which were few and far between. It wasn't that he didn't like Yohji, that wasn't the case, he didn't mind the blonde much at all, it was just that he had no work ethic whatsoever, was always talking to women instead of doing anything useful, and was constantly trying to irk him, for whatever reason, or at least it seemed that way. And when Yohji irked him, sometimes outright made him mad, he had to retaliate. His retaliation was never of the same kind that Yohji used to get him. It was a casual silence and ignorance of his actions that drove the player crazy. And amused him to no end. Usually it also got a laugh out of Omi as well, although Omi's giggles were almost always abruptly silenced by a glare from Yohji. On the other hand, Yohji knew darn well that he couldn't stop him from his relentless irritation, as much as he knew that he couldn't stop Yohji from his teasing. Which was fine with him.

It might have been an endless cycle, but it was one of the comforting constants in their lives. With all of their missions and such, things were always changing between them, and there were precious few consistancies in the lives of the WeiB assassains, but some things never changed: his and Yohji's arguing; Ken's soccer and the kids that hung around him; Omi's constant smile, even when they knew he felt like crying; the girls that plagued the shop... all were the comforting things that stayed the same no matter what happened. Although, he could tell that some of it was coming to an end. Omi's smiles had been more strained lately, as though he were having a lot of trouble keeping them pasted on. He never used to have such trouble, and from this he knew that something was irking the boy, and he could bet it had to do with their missions of late.. they had become increasingly disturbing, and Omi had seemed particularly troubled about the kidnapping case they had had the other day... He frowned to himself at that thought: he had promised himself he wouldn't think about WeiB today.

Now, he let his thoughts drift from the eldest WeiB member to the youngest: Omi. The youngest member, and yet he had possibly been through more than any of them. His past had been so terrible that he had been jarred into amnesia. He remembered no more than flashes-- those flashes had turned into nightmares after the kidnapping mission. At times, he envied the boy his amnesia, but he always reminded himself how much of a Hell it must be to live that boy's life, always smiling and trying to please others, no matter the cost to himself. The teen never seemed to think about himself, only about others, something that at once annoyed him and mystified him. He wondered how anyone could be so selfless. Omi would jump in front of a bullet for any of them, he knew, and no matter how much they teased him, even if his feelings were hurt from time to time by them, he still cared about them, and he always would. If any of them could truly be called loyal to all of the others, it was him.

Omi was the least volatile member, but also the most dangerous when truly angry. On the other hand, Ken was quickly angered, but not nearly as lethal when angry. The difference, other than what it took to get them angry, was in how they behaved when angered: Ken, when angry, tended to rush into things, not think; Omi was calculating, downright devious, and extremely vicious. He had no doubts that if Omi was angered enough, he would kill without caring. He wouldn't apologize, either. He had only once seen Omi angry enough to kill, and that was when they took down the kidnappers. He still remembered the teen's smile as his crossbow bolt downed the last of the men, the gleam in his eyes. It gave him shivers up his spine.

Setting aside the unsettling thoughts, his mind settled upon the last member of WeiB he hadn't analyzed yet: Hidaka Ken, aka Siberian. He still didn't know how he got along with the impetuous younger man. Barely two years older than Omi, Ken was rash, impulsive, emotional.. the opposite of Aya himself. He was still a valued member, though. For all of his rash decisions and emotional responses, for the most part he kept a cool head, and he definately wasn't stupid, even if he wasn't the same caliber as Omi, their resident genius. Plus, he was kind, and he was always encouraging; much like Omi, only he didn't bother to act happy when he wasn't. When he was depressed or angry, he showed it, instead of hiding it inside like their hacker did. Aya had to admit to himself, lying there in the bed by himself, that he envied Ken his cool assurance, and the way he expressed his emotions without holding back, letting them know the full scope of what he was feeling. He wished he could find it within himself to do that, but he hadn't been able to, at least not yet, maybe not ever. He had spent too long locking them within himself.

It's not so bad, though.. he told himself, smiling slightly from beneath his wooly cocoon. It could be much worse.. there are worse people I could be working with. And I.. I like these people. They're my.. my friends...

His smile grew as the thought crossed his mind, and he felt tears starting to sting his eyes. With a soft noise of affirmitive, confirming his own thoughts, he wiped his eyes free of the salty, stinging wetness. He lay there silently for a long moment, and slowly found himself drifting back to sleep, his thoughts becoming dim and fuzzy in the back of his mind, falling into the endless white of a peaceful sleep.

Yes... he said to himself as the white swallowed him up. My friends...

~owari~