(( A/N: This is the last chapter before we go full-tilt into the dramatic albums. There really is no way I can avoid paraphrasing some of the albums, since some very significant things happen to Ken in them, and this story won't make much sense out of context. So all I can do is reiterate the fact that I own NONE of the dramatic album material, and that I am not making any money off of this. In fact, I'm very poor, so suing me will yield nothing of value. If you want my head on a pike that badly, call me and I'll send you a full-scale replica. Also, my sincere thanks go out to all my reviewers, particularly those of you who are here telling me your thoughts after nearly every chapter. Even if you're just repeating yourselves, it does my heart good to hear that you're enjoying the story. I worry that so much dialogue and so little action is boring, and that the bits where I've inserted canon are choppy (due mostly to the lack of writing quality involved in the canon wink) and I love hearing how much you're enjoying the fic anyway. So, thanks. Thanks for putting me on your alerts, thanks for putting me on your favorites, thanks for giving me some of your time while I try to entertain you with a story both twisted and sweet. –Gabby))
They had one week. One week to clean out the new Koneko and get the massive van Kritiker had provided up and running. Ken worked without really thinking about it, mind a million miles away. He wondered if the people chasing Weiss were the remnants of the still-kicking Eszet, if those people would be able to find Weiss by anything they had touched, anything they left behind. He had no time to slip out and sneak over to the small apartment building tucked away behind an open-air market and row of family-owned shops, where Farfarello had taken up residence. His activities weren't mentioned again – he had the feeling Yohji had told the others to lay off, and he was glad. He loved them, honestly, but he'd been too old to be mothered for years now.
When they'd finally gotten everything together, Ken having abandoned most of the belongings least important to him, the Koneko was disparagingly empty. Kritiker had gone through and cleaned up after them, and the place looked as though they had never been there.
Manx surveyed the results with satisfaction. "You've got until noon tomorrow," she told them, Birman standing at her shoulder talking discreetly to one of the agents who had been helping. "Do whatever you need to get done. I shouldn't have to warn you not to tell anyone where you're going, unless you want to be connected with the violence that's about to erupt in Kyoto. This mission is of utmost importance." Her emerald eyes lingered on Aya, who stood stiff-shouldered, his katana having been stowed in the van already. He looked strangely naked without his weapon, but not vulnerable. No one would ever accuse Aya of being vulnerable. "Say your goodbyes. Tomorrow and noon, we leave."
"I don't have anyone to say goodbye to," Omi said a little mournfully, and Ken couldn't help feeling sad for him. He squeezed Omi's shoulder.
"I don't either," he said softly. "I think I'll go by the park one more time, though. I spent so much time coaching there. I can't say goodbye properly to my kids, but you know…" He shrugged.
Omi forced a smile. "I know. Go ahead."
"You're okay?" he verified cautiously, brushing a few strands of near-blonde hair out of Omi's face.
Omi waved him off. "Maa, maa, don't you worry about me. We'll be spending LOTS of time in the van together from now on," he said with a slightly exasperated smile.
Ken laughed. "We'll be all right," he assured Omi. "Get some sleep, okay? I can't sleep tonight, I'm too worked up. I'll see you guys later tonight, or maybe in the morning, I don't know."
Omi looked up at him solemnly. "Be CAREFUL, Ken-kun," he murmured.
Ken nodded, offering Omi what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and went to get his bike.
When he knocked on Farfarello's door an hour or so later, there was no response, but it was unlocked, so he poked his head in. "Far?" He heard the sound of running water and then, strangely, a female voice. Wondering what he'd walked into, Ken began to backpedal, but then the bedroom door swung open and a young woman came bouncing out. She was foreign, golden-brown skin and glossy, jet-black hair tumbling around large black eyes. South American, if his guess was any good. She was wearing black jogging pants and a dark gray tank top that clung to her wiry, athletic frame. She pulled up short when she saw Ken, but then grinned, showing straight, white teeth.
"We're just finishing up," she told him gleefully. "Wait until you see it."
Ken blinked, utterly and completely confused. "See what, now?"
"Some of the people who were looking for him have finally shown up in Japan," she explained, gesturing toward the kitchen and heading that way herself. Her Japanese was accented, but much more natural than Farfarello's. "So we're trying to make him a little more difficult to spot in a crowd. It's tough, since he's so obviously gaijin, and he doesn't TAN… he just freckles, can you believe it? It must be years since he got any real sun…."
"Ano… I'm sorry," Ken began, truly apologetic, "but…?"
"OH. Sorry." She smacked her forehead, then offered him a hand. "I'm Sketch. Gracie Sketch. Most of my friends call me Sketches. I'm from Brazil," she informed him with another gleaming smile, as he took her hand and found it to be both callused and strong. Her knuckles were scarred over from fighting. "Farf's a friend of mine, sort-of. We go to the same dojo. And you're Ken Hidaka," she ascertained. "Nice to meet you finally… last time I saw you, you were unconscious."
"You're a friend of his?" Ken repeated dumbly.
She chuckled. "The few, the proud, the completely insane. Yeah, I'm a friend. Yours too, if you want. Farf got me out of a tight spot once or twice, and he's the best sparring partner I ever had, so his friends are my friends."
Ken smiled, oddly charmed. "That's good. That he has friends, I mean. He should. So… what are you doing, now?"
"We're trying to disguise him," she clarified. "Given his looks, it's sort of tough, but I think we managed with liberal application of dyes and chemicals. You'll see when he wanders out." The sound of running water stopped and in the other room, something clattered against porcelain. "I wouldn't go so far as to say he looks like a native, but at least you wouldn't spot him a mile away in a crowd, like a beacon."
Ken had to smile. Yes, Farfarello certainly was… distinctive. "He'll never look Japanese. His features are all wrong for it." Not that he minded all that much. Farfarello was strikingly beautiful, even through the scars. A dead man would have noticed it.
"Yeah, I thought about trying to hide his eye color with a contact, but I don't want to mess up his vision more than it already is. He'll just have to wear sunglasses. I managed to find a color of liquid tan that makes his scars almost invisible, though. Change his wardrobe and you'd have trouble telling it was him." She seemed quite pleased with herself. "You just swinging by to visit?"
"Actually, my friends and I are leaving Tokyo tomorrow," Ken said sheepishly. "I needed to tell him I won't be around for a little while. We've got some important things to take care of."
She frowned. "That's too bad. I was looking forward to getting to know you. So were all the rest of us."
"I'll be back," Ken told her. "I just. . . don't know when."
"Kritiker finally implemented their plan to put you on the move," Farfarello said simply from the doorway. Ken turned, and felt his jaw drop open.
His hair, which had been growing a bit longer in the months since the fall of Eszet and the dissolution of Schwarz, no longer looked as though a child had gone after it with an inferior set of scissors. It had been trimmed into a common cut worn by many young men in Japan these days, short in the back and a bit longer in the front so it spilled over his forehead. It had also been dyed, not true black, but a very dark brown that was almost black, and looked much more natural. They had, indeed, treated his skin, and it was several shades darker, the bronze-tinged tan developed most commonly by Asians. Ken realized with wild amusement that he could see the freckles that Far had gotten from attempts at the normal method of tanning, but as Sketch had pointed out, the scars were much, much less obvious.
Without his eye patch, if he turned his head slightly, he didn't really stand out at all, but the tattered sweatpants that clung to his hips and thighs were the only thing he was wearing, and something about that made Ken swallow hard.
"Doesn't it look GREAT?" Sketch purred. "And with his sinkhole of a mind, they can't separate him from the masses with a telepathic scan either."
"Yeah," Ken said weakly, staring at that lithe torso, positively crammed with hard, sharply defined muscle, and covered in thick lines of scar tissue. "Great."
Sketch beamed. "But you two need to talk," she said, one corner of her mouth twisting upward mischievously. "So I'll get lost. See you tomorrow, Farf." She promptly removed herself from the apartment, leaving Ken to eye Farfarello with discomfited speechlessness.
Farfarello raised a hand and turned it over and over, staring at the new hue of his skin. "You do not like it?" he wondered, and it took a moment for Ken to respond, since his gaze had wandered again to that bruise-colored socket, closed with those tiny metal staples that always made him wince in sympathy, though he knew Far didn't feel their presence as pain.
"It's good," he said finally. "I know it's necessary. I wish it wasn't, but you are sort of… exotic."
"Understatement," Farfarello said with a bit of amusement.
Ken nodded dumbly. "I… uh…."
"Sit down," the Irishman commanded, and Ken immediately found a spot on the couch. Far folded himself into the other end. "You came to tell me you are going away," he said quietly, with childlike simplicity. "When are you coming back?"
Ken's heart clenched oddly. Though Far didn't really look or sound it, Ken was suddenly convinced that his leaving saddened the other man. Something about the shade of his eye and the timbre of his voice, perhaps. "I don't know," he said softly, honestly. "We have business to take care of. We can come back when it's done. They didn't tell us why we're going to Kyoto, so we don't know yet. It's something big," he said, feeling his stomach flip over uneasily. "Something important. I could tell. Manx and Birman…."
"When do you leave?" Farfarello inquired, bare feet curling under him.
"Tomorrow at noon," Ken told him, smiling fleetingly. "I would have told you sooner, Far, but we've been under close watch for the past few days while we packed up."
Farfarello nodded. "How long will you stay here?"
"Tonight?" Ken smiled fleetingly. "As long as you'll let me. I really wanted to see you before I left," he confessed.
Far smiled, and it was such an unexpectedly sweet smile that Ken gave into an urging that had been present for a long time, and surged forward to hug him tightly.
For a moment, the body against his was stiff with surprise, but after a few seconds, Far's hand came to rest tentatively on his back, between his shoulder blades, and his frame relaxed, folding more easily against Ken. He was so SKINNY, Ken marveled. He could wrap his arms all the way around Farfarello and nearly touch his own shoulders. The tanning chemicals smelled like honey and cinnamon, which was strange, but not unpleasant. He felt Farfarello's fingers wander through his hair, stroking gently, and snuggled him tighter.
Ken lost track of the amount of time they sat that way, his head on Far's shoulder, Far's hand in his hair scratching and petting. Though skinny, Farfarello was far from frail. He was solid, and strong, and somehow that was reassuring, the terrible power he could feel lurking in those coiled muscles, the power to tear a man open from chin to groin or to shrug off bullets. Farfarello was strong. Ken didn't bother exploring why that was important, not at the moment. He just luxuriated in it, listening to the slow, steady heartbeat beneath his ear.
"I don't want to go," he said finally.
Farfarello's voice was low and smooth, almost like Ran's in that moment. "Then, do not."
"I have to. I have a responsibility," Ken explained. "Toward my team, Kritiker, whoever's being hurt by events in Kyoto… not just anyone can stop what's happening now. They need me there, so I have to go."
Far merely nodded. "Then you must do what you must do."
Sensing a terrible fatalism in those words, Ken straightened and found himself nose-to-nose with the madman. "I'll come back," he said fiercely. "I will. And when I get back to Tokyo, the first thing I'll do is call you. Give me your phone number. Even if I can't see you, even if I have to sneak off to a goddamned payphone…."
His words were cut off, and his train of thought abruptly derailed, when Farfarello leaned forward and kissed him.
For a moment, he did nothing, shocked into tense stillness as that warm, strong hand, those delicate fingers, curled around the back of his neck to hold him and strangely soft lips pressed against his. He'd never kissed a man before and never WANTED to, and he waited almost in dread to be repelled and sickened, for the sensation to become singularly unpleasant.
It did not. It was a kiss. He'd had them before, but this one was so much more… soft, chaste, gentle, than most of those had been. There was no clumsy fumbling, no embarrassed giggling going on, no hungry and passionate claiming meant to simulate sex, just the brush of mouth against mouth. His breath fluttered, and he felt Farfarello's, warm against his lips. That golden eye wasn't closed, but it was hooded, the merest slit of rich honey showing between his eyelashes. He stayed there, quietly, not pressing Ken, just… waiting.
Suddenly, Ken was very aware of the warmth of muscle under his hands, the way it shifted and rolled as Farfarello breathed. He opened his hands, pressing them flat against the plane of Far's back and stroking down slowly. Far, almost unconsciously, arched into the touch, and Ken remembered how tactile the Irishman was, hungry for contact after a lifetime of confinement. They were still barely a centimeter apart, and when Ken spoke, his nose brushed Far's.
"Be safe, okay?" he said quietly, voice cracking. "Don't let them catch you. Be SO careful, Far…."
"I will be here when you return," Farfarello said quietly, firmly, and Ken swallowed as he nodded.
"You have to be," he said simply, closing his own eyes because he couldn't stand to confess this with them open. "There's this … this darkness, this abyss… thing… I feel it all the time, and I'm so close to it. Sometimes I just feel it there, and I know all it would take is one step, just one, and that'd be IT, I'd be completely lost, and sometimes it's so tempting because I know if I just take that step, I won't have to care anymore, I can be happy with what I am, but I'll love killing then, and I… it's further away now than it was before I met you, and when I think of Kyoto, I have a bad feeling that it's going to be closer than ever before, and if I fall, what will I DO…."
Farfarello's thumb brushed his cheek. "What you have to," he said simply. "I will be here when you return."
Ken swallowed again, managing a watery smile as he gazed into Farfarello's eye. "You know, somewhere in you, you're good too," he said.
Farfarello frowned, but Ken kept going.
"You ARE. You can be selfless, and generous, and even kind sometimes. It's just… only to people you … care about, I guess. But it's THERE. And I'm glad. You drive me nuts sometimes," he told Far with a laugh, "but I'm glad you care about me."
"Even if I push you?" Far inquired, a slight smirk tugging at his mouth.
Ken shook his head. "Nobody else does. All these things I never stopped to really LOOK at, you know? It hurts when you're doing it. It hurts to… think of myself like that. But after the hurting goes away, I feel like I can breathe easier, see more clearly."
"True love," Farfarello told him, "is wishing for the perfection of the beloved, wanting their completion, so that one's love for them may be that much stronger."
"I don't think I can ever be anything close to perfect," Ken said, abashed.
"No. But I can love the person that you are while, at the same time striving to help you become the person I know you can be."
Ken blinked. "Love…" he repeated, staring at Farfarello and finding his smile faltering. "It's that serious, huh?"
"Had it been less, I would never have mentioned it," Farfarello told him, and Ken had to acknowledge the truth of that – Farfarello had very little patience for the irrelevant or inconsequential, and he always seemed to know his own mind. If he'd just been crushing, he wouldn't have mentioned it to Ken, which begged the question...
"Far? How long have you… felt this way about me?"
"Since I saw the wounds you leave on your kills," Farfarello told him. "The rest of Weiss kills cleanly. A slash of one blade, an arrow through the heart, a twist and jerk of a wire, and it is done. Your kills are messy – eviscerated, mutilated by the very nature of your weapon. Back then, when I was still in the thrall of bloodlust, it enticed me that there was a Weiss kitten who would choose to kill like this. I paid attention to your file. I read of Kase and what surveillance had managed to collect of you and Yuriko. When Nagi hacked into Kritiker's database to get your files, I confiscated yours and read it cover to cover. They all said the same thing – Hidaka Ken is the boy next door, who loves soccer and children, is easygoing and good-natured, and remains remarkably sane even after all that has happened to him. But I could see that they were all blind, that there was so much, right in front of their faces, they were missing. There was more to you.
"The plot thickened and Weiss and Schwarz met, and you and I fought, and then I saw it in you – the ferocity, the bloodlust, something dark and terrible awaiting the right moment to rear its head. That is when I knew we were the same. And as I continued to watch, I saw you slipping closer and closer into the clutches of that beast. I did not intend to meet up with you that day, at the park, but when I did, it was an opportunity I could not waste. I wanted to speak to you outside the context of Weiss and Schwarz, and probe the beast in your soul. And you let me. And over the course of months, I was never allowed to forget how our lives run parallel, how you have felt the pain I could never feel. I would have let you be after the collapse of the temple, but you searched me out. By that, I had to conclude that you saw something in me as well, something that drew you to me even as I was drawn to you. And so, when your life came crashing down with that church and the Abyss yawned so close… you were crying," he said simply. "So I came for you, and brought you to a safe place, and took care of you. And again, you let me."
"And then," Ken said quietly, "you kissed me. And I let you."
"Yes," Farfarello told him. "And you heard the truth of my feelings toward you, and did not shy away. But now, I have done as much as I will do, and the course of the future rests with you. I will not push you in this area," he told Ken. "It is too sensitive."
Ken settled back to consider that, but he didn't want Far to think he was pushing him away, so he let his hands rest on the madman's hips as he chewed at his lower lip thoughtfully. "Everyone I love, I have to kill," he said finally. "Except Yuriko. She was lucky to be sent away. You're… at high risk for that, Far," he said helplessly. "What do I do if they order me to kill you someday? I mean, not only am I physically incapable of killing you, because I know you're much better than me, but I don't want to try. That night, at the temple, I was smiling, but I was screaming, because I'd… I'd TALKED to you, dammit, I'd hung out with you, and here I was supposed to kill you, and I hated it…."
"Then you will do what you must do," Farfarello told him. "And whatever choice you make, I will forgive you, because I know how it feels, and I know how much you fight with yourself over what is right and what is wrong. Whatever you do, you would not do to deliberately hurt me."
Ken stared. "Far. How can you trust me that much?"
"I know you," he said simply. "You are Ken Hidaka. And in spite of everything, Ken Hidaka is principally a selfless man."
Ken suddenly felt tears threatening, and swallowed hard. "I hope you're right, I really do. I don't want to hurt you." His hands, without his conscious direction, caressed those scars.
Farfarello stroked his cheek again, and Ken took a breath, leaning forward and nudging his mouth against the Irishman's again. It was not awkward or uncomfortable. It was almost painfully sweet, shivery-slow, as Farfarello's lips parted slightly and pressed back against his. He stayed there, just feeling it, so soft and painfully honest, a sort of sad gentleness emanating from Farfarello and desperate hopefulness from himself. If there was any safety to be had, he realized suddenly, any escape from that Abyss, it was right here, under his hands, in the form of a man who had already fallen into its depths and had lived to tell of it. And even if he did fall, he suspected, it would matter little to Farfarello. They would both be Dark Beasts then, but he wouldn't be alone.
So, was it possible to disregard a lifetime of influence and love him for that? A soul is not defined by the body that contains it , Farfarello had told him, and on a certain level, Ken had to agree with that. He found that, more and more, he reached for Farfarello, and whether Far was male or female had nothing to do with what he represented to Ken. And as he found what he was looking for, again and again, it ceased to matter at all. And now they were kissing, and Ken had to admit, it was a very nice sensation, everything he would have wanted it to be, if he'd thought about it.
It ended slowly, naturally, and Far uncurled, and Ken found himself settling at his side, head resting in the crook of the Irishman's shoulder as Farfarello draped an arm around him. After a few minutes, Far's breath ruffling Ken's hair pleasantly, the Irishman picked up the remote control and pointed it at the TV. The DVD symbol on a blue background came up, and Ken glanced up.
"What are we watching?"
"Whatever is in the player," Farfarello told him unconcernedly.
Ken smiled and settled back down, even as the opening sequence and menu came up. Farfarello smiled, but Ken didn't recognize the screen. "What is it?"
"Dogma," Farfarello told him, sounding amused. "Be still, and watch." His hand trailed over Ken's hair, and Ken decided that he was too content to move anyway. He did as he was told, and felt some of the dread that had settled in the pit of his stomach ease away.
That was the first night he heard Farfarello really laugh. He decided that he liked it.
X-X-X