Disclaimer - If I owned Gluhen I would decrease the damn angst by 80%. As it is, I do not and therefore cannot.

This story takes place after Gluhen ends. I have not seen the episodes, but I have read synopses. Any mistakes I trust you will be kind about.

Afterglow

By Felflowne aka Espion

Chapter 6

Freedom

It was a painfully bright spring day when Ken Hidaka stepped out of the State Prison, technically a free man. He blinked almost childishly in the piercing sunlight as he hoisted his shoulder bag up.

I'm out. I've been dreaming of this for so long, and it's finally happened, so why am I not happy?

I don't deserve to be happy.

**

Nagi watched from a rooftop a few hundred metres away as Ken began to walk away from the prison. No one had come to meet him, he was truly alone in the world now.

Nagi hadn't been fooled by the normal release time. He had suspected that the time expected would not be the correct one, so he had been on the rooftop all morning.

What a way to spend a morning, he thought to himself, and now I'm supposed to follow him as he wanders aimlessly around…

**

The sound of screeching tyres jerked Ken abruptly out of his numb reflections.

He looked up, and despite himself a smile appeared on his face.

That is one nice car.

The car was black, with no roof. He recognised it as a Mercedes Kompressor. To his surprise, however, it did not squeal past the gates, but turned sharply in between them, entering the small car park in front of the prison.

With a crunch of gravel, the car stopped right next to him, and Alishe took off her sunglasses and grinned.

'Quit gawping and get in, Hidaka, I'm wasting petrol here!'

'A-Alishe!'

'That's me. You didn't think I'd leave you here, did you?'

'You didn't come…' Ken said amazedly. This was referring to the other visitor's days.

Her face fell.

'I'm sorry. I haven't been well… So come on! Throw your stuff in the back seat and let's get out of here!'

**

Nagi snatched at the small pair of binoculars he kept around his neck whilst on surveillance.

Who's this?

**

Alishe was behaving oddly. She wouldn't look at Ken, or towards the chain link fence on the far side of the car park, opposite the prison, but Ken found he didn't care.

After hugging her to hard she protested, he sat in the left-hand side of the car as Alishe sat in the driver's side, and replaced her sunglasses. They were quite big, and the phrase 'you should have gone to Specsavers,' came into Ken's head.

As soon as the sunglasses were on, Alishe seemed happier, although Ken barely had time to notice before she floored the accelerator and screamed out of the car park.

**

On his rooftop, Nagi let the binoculars fall.

She'd known… She'd known.

She must've known he was there. He hadn't managed to get one good look at the woman's face in the whole time she'd spent in the car park, she'd never looked his way, and those big sunglasses had almost completely obscured her face shape.

She knew I was here…

Nagi was unaccustomed to being sussed out. Normally he outsmarted other people.

**

Alishe took off her glasses after a while, just as they pulled up in front of a tower block.

'Why wouldn't you look at me?' Ken asked as he retrieved his bag from the back seat.

Alishe looked at him shrewdly.

'Because we were being watched, couldn't you feel it? I suspected they might be keeping an eye on you. I sure as hell don't want them to know that it's me that's taken you in.'

'Would they know you?' asked Ken, as Alishe punched the code in for the door. He had forgotten that Alishe was a mild psychic. It didn't pay to knock her hunches.

'Pays to be careful,' she answered, 'but anyway, enough about that. You can stay with me for as long as you like, and I promise not to be mortally offended if you wanna get your own place.'

'This is so kind of you,' said Ken hopelessly, 'I don't know how I'm ever gonna be able to repay you.'

Alishe just smiled.

'Hey, forget it, anything for my little oni-chan,' she laughed, reaching up to ruffle his hair.

'Hey!' protested Ken, but followed her up the stairs towards the fourth floor. Then he thought of something.

'You said you hadn't been well, are you okay now?'

She nodded.

'Didn't take long… Hang on…'

He watched in amazement as she suddenly lashed out with her foot at a door. There was a slight click. Then she inserted a key and turned it. The door opened.

'Sticks in the damp,' she explained, closing it carefully behind Ken as he walked in.

'About not being well, you see, I wasn't exactly sick…'

'You were hurt?'

Ken watched as she sat down in an armchair and then motioned for him to do likewise.

'It wasn't too bad,' she said dismissively, 'can't complain, just I couldn't really turn up to visit you like that. People would've talked.'

Ken noticed that her right shoulder seemed bulkier than it should have, as if there were bandages under her clothes.

'The bitch mission?' he asked.

'Hah! Yeah, it is as well. Didn't exactly go as planned.'

'I really don't think you should…'

But Alishe put up a hand to stop him, thinking as she did it that it would never have silenced the Ken that she'd known before.

'Please Ken, don't get involved. You're well shot of this kind of stuff now, or at least you deserve to be. Another month, and it'll all be over, no sweat, then, hopefully, I can get shot of it too.'

'Instead of just getting shot.'

'Hah! Yeah, precisely. You hungry?'

*********************************************************************************************

Hmm… Lots of Alishe in this one…Well, the story doesn't really work without her so…Sorry! Don't worry! There is Ken Omi stuff coming!

Readers: Like we care.

Felflowne: *beats all undeserving readers away leaving only loyal good ones like Kasra, Kara and Charlie*