disclaimer: koyasu takehito, project weiss, etc.; not mine.
notes: written in response to a challenge (theme: regret). glühen post-episode 8, "instant karma".
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con.sequence
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For a moment, he was afraid to breathe: if he inhaled, he would choke on dust; it was already inside his skull, trickling down to fill his sinuses, his mouth. Coherent thought had crumbled into ephemeral motes that Sena made no attempt to catch hold of. He imagined he was made of dust; the slightest breeze would cause him to scatter, dissolve, disperse into the air. He waited.
A hand on his shoulder pressed him back into full consciousness, made him aware of the bruises that felt tattooed into his skin.
With an effort, Sena opened his eyes. It seemed like too much work to move, so he stared at the ceiling and waited for someone to move into his range of vision. A glass of water appeared instead, and then he heard Aya say, "You should drink this, if you can. You'll be dehydrated from the painkillers."
"Is that all?" he croaked, but dragged himself into a sitting position.
"You're lucky you didn't break anything," Aya said neutrally. He was still wearing his white mission coat, his katana propped up against the nightstand. Sena looked blankly at the dark stains on Aya's perfectly knotted cravat. His fingernails hurt. Was that even possible?
"I guess lucky's not really the word--"
"You're lucky," Aya continued, "that you aren't dead." He took the empty glass and refilled it, still kneeling by the bed.
When he was angry, Aya's voice was void of emotion, low and even and inexorable, like the movement of a knife-sharp pendulum swinging closer and closer to one's throat. Sena pulled at the sheets and said, "Yeah, okay."
"What made you think you could handle the situation alone?"
"What makes you think I couldn't," Sena said without thinking.
Aya didn't smile. "Your ability is not the issue. What were you thinking of, when you went there last night?"
Defensively, Sena said, "What was I -- what else was I supposed to do, huh? I had to follow Shimojima, that was the mission, you've got no reason to be pissed off. I did what I had to do."
"What you had to do, or what you felt like doing?"
"What's the difference? It turned out okay -- for once -- didn't it?" He desperately wished that someone else was in the building, but Youji was off doing some kind of Weiss-related thing (and why did he never get chewed out for going off on missions alone?) and he knew better than to expect Ken back before morning.
Aya put his right hand on the opposite sleeve of his coat, fingers encircling his wrist. When he pulled away, the marks from his glove left a reddish imprint on the white cloth.
"It turned out all right for us, yes. But this could just as easily be my blood, or yours. You left without asking, without planning for backup. That kind of behavior is going to get you killed."
Sena couldn't help it. "Oh, sure," he said. "Killed. That'll be new."
Aya looked at him, through him, until Sena wanted to look away, although he didn't. "You're expendable," Aya said evenly. "We all are. But that doesn't mean you take foolish risks."
The thing about Aya, the thing he liked about Aya despite everything else, was that he was never condescending the way the others could be. It was the overly patient way he was speaking now that made Sena grit his teeth.
"Where was your backup, then?" he snapped. "Did anyone else know where you were, or was it just you and your ideals-- that guy was right, you're just a -- you're just dead inside. I'm sick of following orders all the time, I'm sick of all this crap, it's not getting anything done. How can you just sit here and tell me taking risks is wrong? Like that's not what everyone else is doing."
Aya's mouth flatlined, and when he spoke again his words were clipped, precise. "It's better than what you have. I don't think I need to justify myself to you --"
"-- But I need to justify my reasons?" What was it about Aya that he always felt the need to talk at you when you just wanted to be left alone? "Why does it matter at all? Why do you even care?"
"If you still don't understand why I'm Weiss," Aya said, "then no amount of discussion will change that. Maybe I should wait until Rex arrives to continue this."
Sena tried to imagine being lectured by Rex and Aya at the same time. It was an experience he was sure he could live without. "There's nothing to understand. He -- Kyou, he believed in following the rules. He believed in justice. And it didn't do anything for him."
"He didn't die because of his beliefs," Aya said.
"If you tell me he died for them and that's supposed to make me feel better," Sena began.
Aya shook his head, once. "I don't need to justify my reasons for being in Weiss any more than you do, or Kyou did; there's no point. But throwing your life away because you think the revenge is worth it -- that's why I'm angry, Sena, do you understand that?"
"Are you saying it's not?" He pushed the emphasis on 'you', wondering, as he did so, why he was pushing Aya this far; his head felt fuzzy from the ineffective painkillers and he was, himself, angry, angry at Aya for scolding him like a child, angry at the Zeta Class students who had mocked Kyou, angry at himself for having to be rescued by Aya in the first place -- but not so much so that he wanted to incur any more of Aya's mingled disdain and ire.
Looking down at his hands, Aya said, in that same cold-yet-neutral voice, "I'm here now because it wasn't."
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2 june 2004