He wasn't sure what drove him or propelled him. He wasn't sure why he was fighting. He only knew that the water in his lungs hurt, and the muscles in his thighs and shoulders burned, and wave after wave washed over his head but he refused to go under. He was swimming in grit, and there was sand under his feet, and he hauled himself up onto the beach to collapse on the sand with a coughing moan.
The roughness under his cheek brought him partially back to himself. He hacked and spit up seawater, contaminated with who-knew-what. His skull felt like a bruised melon. It was probably fractured.
"K-ken…."
He turned his head to see Omi crawling toward him. He made an effort and rolled over, eyes falling on the slim form of Weiss's leader.
"Omi," he whispered. Omi was alive. He hadn't died in the collapse. That was good. He remembered thinking, Omi had so much life ahead of him, he couldn't die now. It wasn't right.
There was movement over Omi's shoulder. Ken sat up to look at it, and his head swam immediately with throbbing pain, vision blurring. He blinked and refocused. It was Aya, hauling Yohji out of the water. They'd made it. They were alive. All of them.
That was wrong.
"We did it," Omi was saying, holding Ken's bicep. "We made it. We're out… are you all right, Ken-kun? Can you stand?"
I'm not all right, Ken wanted to say. I've cheated death twice and this time I'm not sure I can go on living. But he forced a smile and nodded instead. "Aa… Omi…."
Aya dropped to his knees and put Yohji down. The lithe, blonde assassin was obviously unconscious, and the redhead weary to the bone. But Abyssinian would not be cowed. He rose to his feet again, sopping trench coat weighing down the usually-proud set of his shoulders.
Omi twisted. "Aya… is he…?"
"He's alive," Aya said hoarsely, coughing as he used his katana as a walking stick to make his way up the beach.
"Wait," Ken tried to say, but failed, and tried again. This time, the word came out correctly. "WAIT. Where are you going?"
"Schwarz," Aya muttered. "If they survived… if they wash up… have to stop them while they're weak, or they'll … get … away…" He dropped before the barrier of the embankment, coughing hard.
"Leave them," Omi said gently, helping Ken to his feet, though Ken didn't particularly want to go. "They're not important right now. We're all injured. We have to get to a hospital with Yohji, and Ken's still bleeding."
Was he? He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything except a terrible cold numbness.
"I'm all right," he said gruffly, shrugging off Omi's hands. "Aya, go north. I'll go south. We'll do a sweep for Schwarz, and if we don't see them, we'll just go to the hospital. Is that all right?"
Aya nodded, once, and Ken turned, stumbling off down the beach. He wanted nothing more than to find a bed and fall asleep for a few hundred years, but something was driving him, the need to know… something. The sand disappeared into trees, a promontory that cut across the beach. He climbed it laboriously and skidded down the other side, exhausted to the point of collapse. Sitting down next to a flowering bush, he put his head in his hands.
"Breathe, damn you, BREATHE."
Ken's head raised slowly. He didn't recognize the voice, though he felt he ought to. Crawling on hands and knees, he peered through the foliage.
"He's still got a pulse. HURRY, Crawford!" That voice, he recognized. Nagi.
"Get the water out of his lungs. Dammit, Schu, don't do this to me, I'm not through with you yet…."
Ken listened, but if Farfarello was there, he wasn't speaking.
"Crawford!"
There was a sickening hacking sound, followed by the sound of retching and the smack of flesh against wet flesh. More coughing. Then, a hoarse, no-longer-nasal voice.
"Good to know I'm… still useful… Brad…."
Crawford let out a sigh, and Ken pushed aside a fern-like plant. He could see them now, Crawford sprawled gracelessly in a sitting position next to Schuldich, who was picking himself up onto his hands and knees. Nagi was kneeling nearby. That was all- there were only the three of them. "Don't scare me like that," he snapped at Schuldich, but without any strength.
Schuldich picked his hair out of his face and offered the American a wry, sad sort of smile. "Sorry," he said quietly. "Something hit me in the back going down and I swallowed water. How far are we from the van?"
"Too far," Crawford said, hauling himself to his feet. "Weiss might have survived too. Can you find them?"
"Brad," Schuldich said gently, "with this headache, I couldn't find a corpse in a graveyard. They're tough, though, for Talentless. They did more than we expected… too bad they still don't know why."
"Pity them later," Crawford told him, leaning down to haul Schuldich to his feet. "Come on, walk. We have to move. We can regroup later. For now, we have to get out of here."
"What about Farfarello?" Nagi wondered, glancing back out toward the sea.
Schuldich sneered. "Hidaka got him good. He's probably dead. He's a psycho, Nagi. We don't need him… come on. We've got better things waiting for us, now that Eszet's gone. We're free."
"But shouldn't we wait?" the boy wondered quietly.
"Why do you care? He killed Tot, remember?" Schuldich said pointedly.
Crawford cut in. "Nagi. We couldn't keep him with us anyway, not anymore. He kills without discriminating or thinking things through. He'd lead the police, and Kritiker, right to us. Let's just go. Now."
Nagi hesitated, then nodded. The three of them climbed back up toward the road.
Ken watched them go, feeling sick to his stomach and wondering whether injury or emotion was the cause of his discomfort. Still, he couldn't stay and wait. He had to get back to Omi and Yohji. He heard the hum of engines. Kritiker would be there, as always, to nurse their wounds and make them whole again. In the coming days, he could sleep as much as he wanted.
"Did you find anything?" Aya demanded when Ken stumbled back to their stretch of beach, feet scuffing up sand and hands stinging when he dropped to his knees. He looked up at Aya blankly before dropping his chin.
"No. Nothing."
"Those engines," Omi murmured. "Is that…?"
"Birman," Aya ascertained, tilting his head back as a troop of Kritiker agents poured over the ridge. They were saved.
Ken watched as he and his comrades were bundled onto stretchers and hauled off into the backs of ambulances. They were driven, with sirens, to the magic bus hospital, where Aya-chan had lain in serene slumber for almost two years. There, under the reassurances of doctors that things would be just fine when he woke up, Ken let himself go to sleep again. He thought maybe he would dream of Kase, or of Farfarello.
Instead, he dreamed of hunting in the jungle. Sometimes, he was a man hunting a tiger, sometimes a tiger hunting a man. He did not wake up for a very long time.
X-X-X-
(( I've been quoting from the series somewhat, and now I'm going to quote from the dramatic albums. So I suppose now is a good time to say that I don't own ANYTHING Weiss related. All the credit for that goes to Project Weiss. What pieces I'm quoting have been translated, perhaps accurately, perhaps not, from Japanese or Chinese and are used without permission. I tried to keep the direct quoting to a minimum and do some paraphrasing. Also, I shuffled the time at which the dramatic album occurs. I know it's in the wrong place in the timeline. You'll just have to excuse it.))
"You need to get the kid some therapy, Brad."
Crawford twisted his head to eye Schuldig balefully. "I've already set something up."
Schuldig scoffed. "That NUN? Brad, please listen to me for ONCE. The woman is a manipulator, all right? Takes one to know one, and I know her for what she is. You can't manipulate Nagi into being happy. It's going to take actual work and effort on your part… on both our parts."
"Nagi needs to become more social. He'll never stay afloat in a regular school with regular classmates if he can't learn to talk to, and relate to, people."
"He killed his own mother! He has bigger problems than a lack of sociability! Everyone he's ever dared to love, who's loved him back, has died. If we're not careful, the kid's going to end up feeling like some kind of pariah. Do you know what he was thinking the other day?" On a roll, Schuldig didn't stop to let him ask. "He was thinking it's a good thing you obviously don't care as much about him as he cares about you, because if you did, you'd probably die too. So it's safer this way, loving you and not being loved in return, because it hurts less than losing you. WE ARE LOSING HIM, BRAD. Something has to be done."
Crawford sighed, sat back in his chair, and pushed his glasses up his nose. When he spoke, his tones were softer. "I'll see what I can do."
Schuldig paced back to the easy chair and flopped into it, barely consoled, but unable to protest further in the face of acquiescence.
Outside the window, a shadowy form slipped away from the square of light and warmth that pierced the darkness in which he shrouded himself. His fingers brushed the glass ever-so-slightly. If he thought he deserved it, he would have broken the glass and pleaded for entrance, but he had no place in their lives. They'd shown him that when they'd abandoned him.
He couldn't go back to Schwarz. He knew that. They had something resembling a family unit now, and would not welcome him. He was fairly certain they did not know he was alive, which meant that, despite the fact that he would have to keep his head down and remain incognito, he was… free.
No more owner. No more leash. No more orders or missions. He could do as he liked.
For a split second, he felt as he thought Adam and Eve must have, teetering on the edge of infinite possibility and unable to take that final, deadly step. But he drew away from the false promise of companionship the window represented and lost himself in the shadows of Tokyo. He would not allow his emotions to run away with him, not this time. He would not ruin this second chance to take the War to God's doorstep.
He was a human being, and he had needs. They included food, shelter, and security. He would find these things first and worry about the rest later. But before anything at all . . . .
Farfarello was an incredibly patient man when he wanted to be. Years of being left in small rooms wrapped in straightjackets had taught him that. So he did not mind waiting for nine hours, as the night slipped away and turned slowly into day, lurking where no one could spot him but he had a good view of the new safe house Crawford had appropriated. At eight, the door opened, and Crawford stepped out with Nagi. They got into a car. That would make it difficult for Farfarello to tail them, but he didn't have to. He'd seen the uniform Nagi was wearing. Every school had a different uniform, so tracking him by that would be relatively easy.
Three hours later, he was scaling the wall of the school building. It would have been easier if Nagi had chosen to eat outside, but he was alone in the classroom, so this would be relatively easy. He slipped in through the high window in utter silence. Nagi, eating hunched-over with his sandwich held in both hands, heard nothing.
Farfarello took hold of Nagi's dominant wrist and clapped the other hand over his mouth. Predictably, the boy struggled, but Farfarello crooned gently in his ear. That didn't calm Nagi down – on the contrary, it made him more afraid. But now that he knew who had him, he also knew it was better for him to be perfectly, completely still.
"Easy," he whispered soothingly, and released the boy. Nagi sat where he was, trembling slightly and panting.
"Farfarello… you're alive."
"Do not state the obvious. It tries my patience."
Nagi wilted. "Sorry."
"You abandoned me when the temple fell," Farfarello pointed out, circling Nagi and sitting Indian-style on the floor in front of him. "All of you left me. But you do not have to worry. I am not angry about that, or anything else. I am here to ask for a favor from you."
Nagi blinked. "What kind of favor?"
"A simple one." Farfarello withdrew a slender, leaf-shaped throwing blade from somewhere in his clothing and nibbled on it thoughtfully. "I am going to drain my accounts and move them elsewhere. I know you have been putting my salary in an account for me. When I do this, I want you to say nothing to Crawford or Schuldig. I do not wish for them to know that I survived. As they are free of Eszet, now I am free of Schwarz, and I intend to remain free. Do you understand?"
Nagi's eyes narrowed and he dipped his head. "Hai. I won't say anything. I won't think about it either. If they ever ask where the money went, I'll tell them I donated it to the Magic Bus Hospital. They'll think that's funny."
Farfarello nodded and stood. "Thank you," he said with his traditional, formal politeness. He turned and left through the same window he'd entered.
Nagi didn't move for ten minutes after he was gone. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.
X-X-X-
It was several months before Ken was able to leave the hospital. None of the others had suffered injuries as severe as his (head trauma was a real bitch, the young doctor had jokingly told him), so one by one, they had come by to wish him well and returned to… whatever life they were building. It wasn't at the Koneko, Ken knew, because Aya-chan was there now. Yohji told Ken when he came to visit. Aya-chan and Sakura both worked at the flower shop and Weiss had been put up temporarily by Kritiker in a safe house. Yohji spoke of traveling and selling flowers out of a van. There was a slightly wistful tone to his voice, and it made Ken wistful in turn, but in the meantime, before they could do that, they would have missions. As soon as Ken was better, Yohji insisted, he could come along. They missed him. They needed him.
When he was alone, as the nights stretched out and his skull healed, leaving him once again insomniac, he flexed his hands and stared at them in the dim light. He couldn't see any blood on them, but he knew it was there, driving him insane with the phantom itch. So much blood, so much death and pain that he'd caused, and nothing could ever wipe it away. Not selling flowers out of a van, not anything.
Several times, he thought of dying and wondered if he had the courage to attempt it, but he always decided against it. As long as he was alive, he could still do some good. He himself was irredeemable, but couldn't even a tainted thing be of some use? He scratched at his hands until they were raw, but the feeling never went away.
One night, he woke from a nightmare to find himself sucking on his fingers. He tasted copper. His teeth had torn open a hang-nail. Nothing serious, but the taste of the blood was sharp and musky, and he rolled it around on his tongue as he tried to get back to sleep and failed.
I'm losing my mind. I'm going insane. Is there nothing bright anymore?
"Concentrate on healing," the doctors told him. "You'll be back on your feet soon."
Soon turned out to be an eternity.
When he went home, he went home to a strange place. His things were there, in boxes, but they had no memory to him anymore. He didn't bother unpacking them. He sat in a plain room, surrounded by the boxes that contained his life. He wanted to smash them, burn them, throw them out the window. Instead, he unpacked only the things he absolutely needed and left the rest to sit against the walls in neglected silence. There was a new Koneko Kritiker had set up, far from the old one, and they were still selling flowers, but the absence of their old customers made the job not nearly as diverting as it had once been.
He went to the park when he was well enough, but he did not resume his coaching. He watched from the trees, where he wouldn't be seen, as the kids he'd thought of as HIS for so long laughed and ran their drills.
He sat for hours on the bench behind the Buddha, but always alone.
It was on one of those wanderings that he met Natsuki, and everything fell apart.
X-X-X-
"Ken? Isn't it Ken?"
The excited tones in her voice only made his stomach fall even more.
"Are you still in J-League? I saw it on TV once before going to America to study!"
Way to pick at old wounds, Natsuki-chan, he thought wearily, then scolded himself. He had grown up with this girl. They'd been children in the mission together, when Ken's father had sent him there for therapy after his mother had died. After all the trouble they'd gone through together, he shouldn't think such things about her.
"I had to quit," he told her. "I got injured."
"Oh, really? I'm so sorry… I hadn't heard anything since coming back from the US, so I didn't know." She smiled broadly at him across the table of the small coffee shop they'd wandered to. "Ano… Ken… do you still remember things from that time?"
He blinked, trying to summon some sort of interest in the conversation. "Um?"
She giggled. "At first, I thought you were such a scary kid, because you sat at the door with that frown on your face."
Ken looked away. "After mom died…." Old sadness welled up and he swallowed. "I didn't want to talk to anyone. Dad sent me to the church for therapy, because the Sister would give therapy to children."
She nodded, saddening also. "We were both so young then, we never talked about these things. As for me, my parents couldn't stand each other. Every time they fought, it was over me, so I kept thinking that it would have been better if I was never born. I cried so much, all the time. It's because of Sister that I found my smile again. Of course, you helped too."
Ken smiled fleetingly. "We were enough trouble for Sister. We hid all the prayer candles, dumped out buckets of roaches during mass…."
"And told people the roaches were there because the church was falling apart!" She laughed. "Always thinking up tricks and giving Sister trouble."
"I wonder how she's doing," Ken murmured distantly.
"Oh, she's very well," Natsuki assured him.
Ken blinked. "You've met recently?"
Natsuki fidgeted uncomfortably. "Well, I… the truth is, I went back to staying at the church. I couldn't take it in America. I was jumpy and… things. Sister told me when I left that I couldn't come back, but she let me – she welcomed me back with the same smile. She's been so wonderful to me."
Ken listened quietly as she told him about it, then blinked when she jumped up and grabbed his wrist.
"Let's go see her right now!"
He balked. "Uh… no. I shouldn't…"
But he couldn't win the argument, and shortly thereafter he found himself on the steps of the church where he'd spent most of his childhood. The crooked wind vane he'd made as a young boy was still there.
If I told Sister what Farfarello told me, about sin and God… what would she say, I wonder?
The doors flew open and the Sister came out. Natsuki went to her. He was welcomed back with laughter and threats of a lecture, memories and teasing. For a moment, his heart almost eased.
Then he heard a cat's cry, turned, and saw Naoe Nagi.
For a moment they just stared at each other. Then Nagi, as if he didn't know Ken at all, merely nodded and said, "Hello."
Ken nodded blankly.
"He's living here at the moment," Natsuki told him. "His name is Nagi."
Ken smiled slightly. "Cute cat," he said, nodding at the feline in Nagi's arms.
Nagi's lips quirked up just slightly. Behind those cerulean eyes lurked a great deal of darkness and pain, and Ken felt bad for him. It couldn't have been easy, growing up as what he was, with Schwarz defining things for him.
"Sister, I'll go chat with Nagi. You and Ken catch up!" Natsuki announced, tugging Nagi away. Ken blinked.
"But…"
"Go! Go chat!"
He stood for a moment, staring at Sister, then managed a half-smile. She smiled widely at him.
"Welcome back," she said. "Come inside. We'll have tea and you can tell me everything."
X-X-X-