Part II

With a small sigh, Aya let himself into the apartment he shared with his sister. He flipped on the hall light as he shut and locked the door behind him. Slumping against it for a moment, he put aside his barely admitted grief for Ken to think about more pressing problems. So Omi and Youji thought that someone was targeting Weiss. With Nakata's, and now Ken's deaths, it certainly looked suspiciously like that to Aya too.

A brief flash of panic seared through his gut. What if they? What if –

He ran, almost tripping in his haste, down the hallway to Aya-chan's room. The sight of her face, soft and pale in the faint light coming from her window, released the constricting hold fear had on his heart. She shifted a little in her sleep, making a contented noise. He breathed easier. She was safe.

Leaning against the doorframe, Aya watched her sleeping. This had become a habit of his when he woke sweating and gasping in the night, after dreaming bloody dreams. It was nothing like that silent vigil he had kept at her bedside for years, staring at her silent, still form and wondering if she would ever wake up. Wondering if she would ever open her eyes to look at him again, and in so doing, absolve him of all of his sins. For if she had never awakened . . . it would have all been in vain. He would have been a bloody murderer for nothing. And no light would shine on his life again.

Briefly, he had considered letting Youji into his world. But the older man had never lit up his life like Aya-chan had. Youji hadn't understood his moods, or the words he had spoken with his eyes. Aya-chan had. Aya had also found that he was unable to even let down his guard enough for Youji to be satisfied. He wanted a deep, and to Aya, terrifying emotional intimacy. All Aya's focus, all his emotions had been wrapped up with his sister, and he had none left over for anyone else. Aya-chan had always come first, because she was all he had left. If he had let himself love Youji as much as he loved Aya-chan, he would have lost him. That was something he could not have borne again. So he walled himself away as much as he could, and finally, he had just left.

Now, though, now . . . Aya-chan was awake. The terrible, all consuming anger that had driven him was gone. But somehow, the light in his life was not as bright anymore. Somehow, Aya-chan had become not enough.

The soft, but insistent ring of the phone instantly jolted him from his train of thought. He frowned, hurrying toward the kitchen. "Fujimiya," he said tersely.

Youji's voice spilled out into his ear. "Fuck, Aya you have to get out of there now."

Dread coiled, icy cold. "What?"

"Someone just fucking shot at me, okay?" Youji sounded winded, as if he had been running.

He probably had, Aya realized grimly. "You think –" he began.

"It seems likely doesn't it? And if whoever it is didn't know where you lived before, they sure as hell know now. You need to take Aya-chan and get the hell out of Osaka."

Aya struggled not to drop into that easy, familiar mission mode. "Where?" he ground out.

"Go to Momoe-san's. She still lives in Nagoya. You remember the address?"

"Yes." He had already lost the fight. His mind was whirling, planning, listing, plotting driving routes.

"Good. I'll meet you there."

"All right." A sudden thought struck him. If that idiot – "Are you safe?"

Youji laughed breathlessly. "Mostly, for now." Faintly, Aya could hear noise in the background. "I'll be fine."

"Hn," he managed. He ground his teeth in frustration. It was just like Youji to call and warn Aya, endangering himself in the process.

"Don't worry, Ran." Youji's voice was light. "I'll meet you in Nagoya, all right? Be careful!"

The dial tone buzzed in Aya's ear for a few seconds before he slowly hung up the phone. If Youji made it to Nagoya alive, he was going to kill the man himself.

------

To Aya, the silence in the car was almost deafening. Aya-chan was staring out the window, wide awake even though it was now almost one in the morning. He could see her giving him small questioning looks every once in a while out of the corner of his eye, but he ignored it for now. It was time, he supposed, to come clean to his sister, and tell her exactly the kind of evil person he had become.

When he had woken her up, Aya had only told her they needed to go to Nagoya for a while, and to pack some clothes. She had started to argue, but the look on his face had been more than enough to stop her. For the two years since they had left Tokyo for good he had avoided mentioning his time there to Aya-chan. He knew how she would react when he told her the boy she had grown up with and still innocently loved had turned into a cold-blooded killer. With fear and disgust. He deserved nothing better. Aya-chan, his sweet, sweet sister. He couldn't bear to lose her now. Not now that she was so very much alive. Damn this nameless and faceless danger that was forcing his hand.

Aya had been so wrapped up in avoiding the past that he hadn't even prepared himself for an eventuality like this. What should he tell her?

"Aya –" he began.

She turned to face him. "Ran nii-chan, why are we going to Nagoya?"

The words on the tip of his tongue melted away. "Ah." He paused for a moment, preparing himself for this task. "While you were in a coma, I was involved with an organization that dealt out justice when the law couldn't, or wouldn't." He risked a brief glance at her face, and was surprised to see that her expression was calm. "Youji was too," he added as an afterthought.

Aya-chan's voice was flat. "Did you kill people?"

He shot a brief, shocked glance her way. He didn't want to say it, to make it real, but he couldn't lie, not to her. "Yes." That admission seared his gut, and with it came a white hot pain that almost brought tears to his eyes. "Now one of my team members has been killed." Aya stopped there, compressing his lips. Not his team anymore.

"Oh." She sat there in silence for a few minutes, twisting her hands in her lap. "And now someone wants to kill you?"

Aya didn't dare look at her face, too afraid of what he would see. This was it. This was the end of his life. "Aa." He wished for a large hole to open up and swallow him down, down to Hell like he deserved. "There's something else." He bit his lip, absurdly afraid to tell her this, the least and most of his crimes.

"What is it?"

It all came out in a rush. "I took your name. They all knew me as Aya." He wanted to close his eyes, but instead looked steadily at the highway, not really seeing it at all.

Aya-chan's voice was incredulous. "Why?"

Why indeed? "Because you weren't there."

She sat, quietly digesting this information. Aya couldn't bear to look at her, so he just kept on driving automatically, eyes straight ahead. He felt as though he had torn his heart out of his chest, and it now lay in the palm of her hand, feebly pumping blood to a body it was no longer connected to. When Aya-chan spoke, it startled him, so much was he expecting never to hear her voice again.

"Nii-chan?"

He swallowed the bile rising in his throat. "Yes?"

"You're a big jerk."

"What?"

She smacked his arm lightly. "Why didn't you tell me? Didn't you trust me?"

He was speechless. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. Where were the angry recriminations? Where were the tearful goodbyes? He was sure his mouth was hanging open, as his mind tried to grasp this impossibility. She wasn't angry? She didn't despise him? "How?" he managed.

She sighed. "Sakura told me all of that ages ago," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "Really, Ran, how can I judge you when you did it all for me?" She patted his knee gently. "I just wish you had felt you could tell me sooner."

He found himself apologizing. "I'm sorry."

Smiling, Aya-chan settled herself deeper into the seat. "You better be, nii-chan. I'm missing school for this."