Author: Mirrordance
E-mail: mirror_dance2@hotmail.com
Title: Bed of Roses
Type: part 5/6
Spoilers: generally, with references to entire series
Warnings: drama, angst, language, violence, yaoi
Teaser: After two years of semi-retirement from Kritiker, Ran and Yoji return to action when they discover the new target is a murderous, out-of-control Siberian
"Bed of Roses"
a WKff by Mirrordance
don't own anybody…
CHAPTER FIVE: Burn
"Hurry, dress up," the whisper woke him, had him shooting upright with his heart pounding.
"Omi," muttered Yoji as he groped his night table to turn on the light. The younger man's graceful hands grasped his.
"No, do it in the dark," Omi said softly, "They musn't think we've ever left at all."
Yoji got up quickly and thought about what Omi meant when he said 'dress up.' The tone suggested that "dressing up" meant to bring something lethal with him. It's been awhile since he had killed anybody with his wires, but his watch was always just a hair away from his fingers, just beneath one of the pillows of his rumpled bed.
Omi checked his watch, and looked at the thin line of space underneath Yoji's door. As Yoji had said, Ran haunted the corridors of the apartment each night, always on the verge of knocking on the door. If that was true, he should be by any moment now…
True to form, the steps sounded softly, imperceptible to untrained ears. The shadow stopped right in front of the door. Paused. Hesitated. Began to turn away…
Omi threw the door open and Ran stared at him, betraying very little hints of his surprise.
"We have to go," Omi said plainly.
Ran didn't even blink. He nodded and stalked towards his room.
"I didn't know until just about an hour ago," Omi said edgily when they got into his car. He, Yoji and Ran went up to the roof of the Koneko, used lines that Omi had set up to cross to the roof of the next-door building, then the building next to that, then made their way to the basement parking where Omi had left a spiffy new black Aston Martin. He tossed Yoji the keys and settled for the backseat.
"Know what?" Yoji asked as he started the car.
"They gave Ken that new case," Omi replied, "the diMarco ring. You ought to know that."
"Oh do I fucking know that," grated Yoji. It was only one of the biggest cases he had ever done in his life. It nearly got him and Ran killed going undercover. The hierarchy was so intricate and the group so damn evilly screwed and wide-ranging it shocked even him.
"They're practically an army," said Ran flatly, clearly implying that the mission was suicidal enough for one group, let alone a single man, as skilled and driven as he may be.
"Ken knows it too," said Omi, "but he wouldn't pass it up. Kritiker knew that he wouldn't let it go."
"Bastard has a death wish," growled Yoji, "Would I ever ring his neck if we get out of this alive."
"They all knew," Omi said steely, "I got it out of one of the techies. He said that Kritiker was pretty clever. If Ken succeeded, great. If he died, we got a troublemaker out of the fold, and can just try and get DiMarco next time. I think he meant to slip, just to goad me. He told me I really had a strong stomach to let my old teammate go out like that. That I really must be a Taketori after all."
Yoji glanced at Omi's cold face from the rearview mirror. "Did you deck him?"
Omi met his eyes coolly. "He told me what I needed to know. So I decided to give him a raise."
--
"Keep your eyes on the road, Balinese," Ran said quietly. It seems they've all changed somehow, even Omi with all his youth who had always looked so untouched and innocent. Tonight was the first time he had seen him in two years, and he looked at Omi and it felt like an eternity.
"You know this building, right?" asked Omi, looking at his palm pilot, where he kept blueprints and maps and various other information.
"Yup," replied Yoji, "Do I ever. And I even know the layout. The information came from us, remember?"
Omi turned to Ran. "Where would Ken go, you think?"
Ran thought about it. Ken was pretty traditional. He would proceed with the mission in just one of two ways: either he would blow something up and cause a distraction and go after the target in the middle of the chaos, or he would attempt stealth and get the target quietly, in and out. Ran would have preferred the latter; it was safer. But Ken had always been upfront, and without the reins that Weiß had become for him, he was bound to be even more impulsive. The first method was messier. Had he changed enough to maybe prefer it? Ran thought back to a few nights ago, when Ken had savagely and easily cut up anyone who got in his way, and ran after those who were trying to leave, then wiped the blood from his bugnuks with a dead man's shirt, the victim's eyes staring into empty nothingness as Ken coolly used his tattered clothes as a rag…
The dim sounds of an explosion rocked the near distance.
"That's him," Omi said plainly.
Yoji floored the gas.
"Why don't you all just quit," Siberian drawled, pulling his hand out of another dead body, his shaking legs allowing the force to break his balance slightly, such that he had to brace one hand along the wall of the building's corridor to steady himself.
"Your boss's goddamn guts are all over my fucking hand already!" he screamed, "No one's going to get paid anymore!"
He launched himself at three more men, instinctively plunging his weapon here, there, knowing only by the feel of the flesh on his knuckles if he had hit home and ended another life. He pulled his hand away, let the bodies fall, found something else—someone else—to stick his claws into. It never ended. There was just so many of them.
He started to laugh. What a ridiculous situation this was.
He grabbed a man by the face, bashed it against the wall and hearing the skull break, as he jumped toward the next man, and gutted him, and used his other hand to tear the throat out of another obliging gentleman.
He tore his way through his enemies. Stumbling over bodies, he got up in a blink and added more to the pile that was haunting the corridor behind him, and everywhere else he passed.
"I'm like a plague," he laughed shakily, tears leaking along the side of his face.
The crowd was thinning. It was about fucking time. All this stench was making him dizzy, driving him crazy.
He tried to plunge his bugnuks into the neck of a man who seemed to tower over everyone else, standing in a strangely familiar stance, but the man turned in time such that his bugnuks just ended up taking a nice chunk of the man's arm instead.
"What the fuck, Siberian!" Yoji exclaimed.
Ken jumped away, as if stung. His brows furrowed as he stared at Balinese in his old mission clothes, with his wires.
"I—" he stammered, even more panicked and confused when Ran and Omi came running into the corridor from wherever hell-hole they have been this crazy night.
"I…" Ken racked his brain, "I'm sorry. Um. They run out of faces after awhile…" He braced his hand against the wall. "Waitaminute, what the fuck. I should be asking the goddamn questions!"
"You okay?" Omi asked Yoji.
"Yeah," Yoji answered wearily, "Let's get out of here, ayt? This place is gonna go any moment."
"I don't need anyone covering my ass," snapped Ken, "Everything is under control. MY control."
Ran walked towards him. With his tall frame and black clothes, and the forbidding expression on his face, he seemed to loom larger as he moved closer. It made Ken feel as if he was they way he used to be; the Ken who would have followed this man to the ends of the Earth. And then Manx threw a curve ball and Ken thought he could give the world to Ran instead. But Ran didn't want it. Ken burned with how much it hurt to have left, and how much more it hurt for his efforts not to be appreciated. And now he just… burned. With his pain and all his anger and madness. His eyes burned with his frustrated tears, his throat burned by the lump lodged there, his heart… He just… burned.
Ran stopped two steps away from him.
He could have laughed. Until now, two steps too far…
His vision blurred in a poetry of red and black.
Ran closed the distance as Ken lost consciousness.
* * *
