Author- Luna P aka Nikki
Rating- R for a lemon here and there
Warning- Rape, Yaoi, lemons, assassinations, more yaoi, more lemons, blood and gore with a ton of fluff on the sides n.n
Summary- Schwartz are back, with a vengeance. A new Takatori is holding the reigns and will do anything to destroy Weiss. Will they be able to stay together and fight when everything is falling apart around them? AyaxKen YohjixOmi
Disclaimer- When Aya and Ken realise their feelings for each other and fall head over heels in love with each other I will own it. Until then, nope sorry n.n
Pairing- Aya/RanxKen is the main with hints of YohjixOmi,
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Chapter sixteen- Thank you for the venom
Ran's POV
A key, that's what Nagi had said there was some sort of key to undoing everything that Schwartz had done to Ken. Of course I still didn't know exactly what Schwartz had done to him but I knew that it had to be undone. God I was running myself in circles with this, I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing I had been up for hours reading and re-reading through this file. Studying the pictures and fighting back the urge to throw up every time I saw them.
I picked up the one of Ken and the wounds on his back but I couldn't bring myself to look at it, my eyes jerking away every time they got too close to focusing on the actual image. I remembered now, remembered seeing the scars on his back when we had been in the warehouse. Angry and yet gentle, softened with time, I kept telling myself that it was easy to mistake them for scars that had been received from missions. That was why I hadn't asked, why I hadn't known…
Damn it, this was too hard, too much for me to deal with on my own. But it wasn't as if I was about to admit that now was it? A key, how would that work, well if they would have altered his mind somehow then it would have to be something important. Something special and sentimental something that he would never want to forget. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, could this even be done? Could I find something to reverse everything that Schuldig and Farfarello had done to him? I shook the thoughts away, what did it matter, I would try anyway. I needed him back,
It was as simple as that, even if we couldn't be together anymore after this, as long as I knew that he was alive and safe and there was the possibility of us being as we once were. That seemed like more than enough for me at the moment, I just wanted to see him, to touch him, to run my hands through his hair and kiss his lips. It had been so long since we had last been together but I remembered everything about that like it was yesterday. I remembered the smell of his hair, the taste of his lips, the way his body fit perfectly against my own and I knew that if I wanted all of that back I would have to find this fucking key.
I glanced down at the picture in my hand, everything within me protested against this action but I had to, I had read everything, studied every picture and come up empty. There was nothing that really stood out enough to be that key. My hand was shaking as I stared at it, fuck it, my entire body was shaking, I was terrified of looking at that picture, because it wasn't some random person that had been attacked and was now being talked about in the newspaper or something. I mean that in itself was awful. But this was Ken, the man I loved and this was the childhood that he had been haunted with and that he had had to deal with alone.
I still could not bring myself to look at Ken, choosing instead to stare at everything in the background of the photograph. This was my last chance to find out whatever it was that could bring Ken back to me. My eyes stopped when they caught sight of the pink rabbit in the corner of the hospital room, I glanced from the picture to where the plush toy was actually sat on the bed and then back. Would that be enough to get him back? No I was fairly sure that was the answer, it wasn't enough, sure it held sentimental value because his little sister had given it to him. But it was just a toy just another present, would his mind be able to make the link from this to his little sister, to his family, to his past and subsequently to his present?
I had my doubts, his sister though, Amy, the name wouldn't be enough it wasn't incredibly common in Japan but still a lot of young girls had the name and after all it was just a name. Then I saw it, around Kumagoro's neck, something sliver sparkling from the flash that had gone off when the photo had been taken. It wasn't on the rabbit now, so where was it? Could that be it? Was it some sort of family heirloom? It had to be, that had to be the key, what else could it be? I had been through everything and only this stood out and made even sense as to why it would work. All I had to do now was find it…
As if on cue a piece of paper slid out of the very back of the folder and landed on my lap, a small slip of white paper with the words 'when you know, go to the warehouse Kritiker gave you' scribbled onto it in black pen. I growled, it could be a trap, I couldn't dismiss that as an idea. But I'd have to go wouldn't I? I'd hit a dead end and needed to find another way out. God this was so complicated, so confusing why couldn't anything just be simple? On the back of the paper there was a time, I had an hour to decide what I was going to do…
Normal POV"Hm, hm, hm, Nagi's been acting strange recently," Farfarello chuckled as he toyed with the knife in his hand, watching intently as it glimmered and sparkled in the light coming from the open window just off to his left.
"What do you mean?" Schuldig asked walking up behind the white haired man and draped his arms over his shoulders. Licking his ear softly and toying with one of the earrings that he found there. Farfarello seemed to muse over the question for a while, gently and swiftly slitting the tip of his index finger and watching as the blood swelled and slipped from the cut. Dripping from the wound to the floor where it stained the carpet on impact.
"Hm, hm, think about it, he's prodigy, Naoe Nagi, the most antisocial being in the world and yet he's been going out almost every night. Doesn't that strike you as odd?" Schuldig chuckled into the others neck and ran his hand through his silken white hair.
"I suppose, but I'll tell you what else is strange…" The Irishman's head turned to look up at the German the one golden eye regarding him questioningly.
"Really and what's that?"
"You haven't been out to a church to kill a Priest or helpless nun, in what seems like an eternity now. Aren't you becoming bored?"
"The Weiss kittens have been keeping me entertained, though I do miss watching the Priest's squirm for their lives, and most of all I miss watching every last drop of their blood spill out over the floor of the alter as they beg for their 'God' to save them. Which he never does."
"Ironic, so what of our dear Kamui, he seems to be spending a lot of time with Yuuki, and he's blocking me from reading his thoughts. Perhaps he's planning to betray us." Farfarello chuckled once again,
"Who? Us? His best friends ever since he was a child, hm, it's a possibility but oh well, it's too late in the game to switch the sides your playing for now. I may view Crawford as a stuck up egotistical loser, but he knows how to play people at their own games and he knows how to get a job done. And done well."
"So we trust him with our lives then?"
"I trust my life with no one," Farfarello explained with a smirk, licking his blood away from the surface of the knife in his hands. Schuldig chuckled and lightly bit down on the younger mans jaw.
"Is that so Farfie? Not even me?" The smirk widened and he placed the knife to the side of Schuldig's neck, pressing down, hard enough to make an slight indent but not hard enough to draw blood.
"Especially not you," he chuckled and then threw his knife at the door that was opening behind them, it stopped mid flight and fell to the floor. Midnight blue eyes regarded it silently, noting that it wouldn't have hit him even if he hadn't stopped it. It would have landed in the door and inch to his left, perhaps scratching the side of his face perhaps not. The point was it was meant to get his attention and not hurt him. "Hm, hm, where are you going Nagi?"
"Out," he stated walking over to where his coat had been thrown over the back of the couch and placed it around his shoulders. He registered Schuldig and Farfarello staring at him intently and turned his head to look at them. "What? Are you going to tell me to be back by midnight?" Farfarello stared over at the youngest member of Schwartz and pulled away from Schuldig's grasp waltzing over to the brunette. A knife seemingly materialised itself in his hand.
"No, but I am curious as to where you are going," Sapphire eyes narrowed when the knife was brought up to the side of his face and pressed into the skin that resided there. He could feel the tip of the weapon pierce his flesh and growled eyes locking with the Irishman's and ordering for him to back off with little more than a glare.
"I don't think that's any of your business,"
"I do," Schuldig explained as he wandered into the room and leant against the doorframe. "After all the work we do is very dangerous and depends on trusting one another, we don't want anyone betraying us now do we…" Nagi smirked and chuckled slightly, doing up his coat. "And what may I ask is so funny?"
"Ha, I'm not betraying you, I'm going out to buy a CD so that I don't have to hear you two later on when you decide you want to fuck each others brains out. Now if you don't mind the store won't be open forever." Schuldig chuckled and nodded as if approving of what Nagi wanted to do. Without another word being uttered the brunette opened the door with his telekinesis walked out and slammed the door behind him in the same manner as how it had been opened.
"Ah, he's growing up, it happens so fast" Schuldig joked and wrapped his arms around Farfarello's waist pulling him back against his chest. "Want to go fuck our brains out as our dear Nagi suggested, after all there's nothing else to do,"
"Hm, okay but only if I get to go and kill someone afterwards," Schuldig smirked and gently kissed his lovers neck, chuckling into the pale and scared skin.
"There's a small church down the road and then we can swing by Yuuki's, find out what Kamui is doing" Farfarello just nodded in agreement,
Ran's POVI sighed and ran a hand through my hair as I walked into the pitch black warehouse, I was being reckless at the moment, I knew that, I was just walking into situations and doing things that could possibly get me killed. But that didn't seem to matter or register in my mind, the only thing I wanted was to get Ken back and get my revenge on Farfarello and Schuldig for everything they had done.
"You decided to come then, I was worried that I had done all this for nothing" the soft teenage voice seemed to cut through the silence like an invisible knife.
"I didn't have much of a choice now did I? So who am I talking to Nagi or Prodigy?"
"Nagi or course, Prodigy would not even consider betraying his teammates, well he'd consider it but never actually do it." I slowly stalked across the warehouse to where I believed the kid to be. I was focused and listening for any unusual sounds, it might still be a trap after all.
"Did you read that file that you gave me?" There was a soft sigh and then an almost deafening silence that seemed to merge with the darkness and threaten to swallow me whole.
"I skimmed it, did you find what you were looking for?"
"I think so, why did you bring me here?"
"Because you've found what it is but don't know where to look I know someone that can help you."
"Really and who might that be?" With a loud click all the lights in the warehouse came on, I could now see that Nagi was about three metres infront of me and off to his left was a women, she had long black hair and dark brown eyes. A pretty woman that appeared to be in her late forties though could still pass off being in her early thirties.
"This is Murakami Arashi, she worked on Ken's case, in fact it was the last case she worked on before she quit. She knows everything about what happened, knows every last inch of Ken's case and she can help you find what you are looking for." I looked at the woman who was at present finding the floor far more interesting than either Nagi or I before I switched to staring at Nagi.
"Why the fuck are you doing all of this? What do you get from it?" He sighed and lent against the wall and shoving his hands into his coat pocket.
"Schwartz have been my life ever since I can remember or as far back as I dare to, they're like a family to me, Brad's like my father, Farfarello my brother and Schuldig that strange cousin that just happens to live with us. They are all part of who I am and sometimes that makes me fear what I am to become. I've slowly begun to realise that this is not the life I want for myself. I don't want to be Schwartz for an eternity when this is over it has been foreseen that there will be no Weiss and there will be no Schwartz."
"Crawford told you this?"
"Some of it, I worked the rest out for myself, Schwartz have enough money to our name for each of us to be able to disappear and live a normal life. But a normal life would not be fitting for Schuldig and Farfarello and Brad would tire of it eventually. It may even bore me, but I think that it is time for me to leave Schwartz and build a new life for myself. To do this I must play along with Schwartz' game for it will provide me with what I need. But I do not like the ending that they want this game to have so I have gone behind Brad's back and become the game master so that the ending suits me. Once this is done, if you and Ken come out of it alive, you will never hear from Schwartz again, likewise you will never hear from me."
"Don't I get a choice in this ending?" He shook his head and glanced around the warehouse.
"I have added in every factor, if all goes well we should all leave with what we want, of course I can not say how things will play out after all of this has happened. At the end of the day I'm being selfish and getting what I want but I'm giving you this chance to get what you want. Not because I like you or think that you deserve it but because I like Ken and I want him to be happy." I growled and stepped forward glaring at the teenage brunette.
"Why don't you just tell him everything then? Why not tell him the truth and send him back to us?"
"Because Schuldig has placed blocks within his mind to block his past out, he doesn't remember anything, his family, their deaths, his rape, Kase, J-league, Weiss, you none of it. But that doesn't mean it's gone, it's all still there just hidden away. If I were to go and tell Ken everything it could affect him in two ways, one, he wouldn't believe it, the blocks would hold and everything would just go on as normal. Or two, it would cause cracks of doubt to form in the barriers, they would become unstable and eventually collapse. This would cause a reaction within his mind, one resembling domino's falling over, after the one block collapsed all of the others would. All his memories and emotions would come flooding back in a rush of pain, happiness, sadness, turmoil, every emotion under the sun and if that happens it will kill him."
"Won't that happen with this 'key' you keep talking about?"
"It may do, but it's more likely that he would become focused on that one thing, that key, that one emotion he felt and the connection he had with that item. Rather than cause the blocks to collapse they would merely begin to fade away, all the memories and emotions behind that block would then be free to return to where they were supposed to be. It would be like a filing system going wrong and then someone putting it right again. After that one block was gone the next would fade and the next and the next until none remained. It would be painful but it would not kill him because everything would have time to sort itself out."
"Okay, so what do we do now?" I asked, ignoring the complexity of what I had just been told.
"You read the file, tell me what you found." I growled and shoved my hand into my coat pocket finding what I needed and pulling it out shoving it into Nagi's hands and folding my arms across his chest.
"In the background, the pink rabbit, the silver thing around its neck, I'm fairly sure that's what we're looking for. I'm not entirely sure what it is though and I have no clue as to where it is now." Nagi sighed and past the picture to Arashi, she cringed when she took in the sight of it, obviously stirring bad memories.
"I thought that this was over and done with when I'd handed in my badge. These were the worst few months of my life; he was such a sweet kid. I'm sorry, you never clarified, why am I here, why did you come and get me?" She asked Nagi and glanced up at him.
"Because Hidaka Ken is in trouble and we need your help to find this silver thing here," he explained and pointed at the chain on the picture. "You spent a lot of time with Ken after the incident with Asakura Sorata. You should know, no pressure but you are our last hope." She stared down at the picture and smiled softly,
"I remember that, it was his sisters locket, it was a family heirloom, passed down to every women in the family on their fourth birthday. Umi, Ken's mother, had worn it up until then and then she, as her mother had done before her, passed it down to Amy. I had seen Ken with it at the hospital. After his examination when I was driving him back to my apartment. He was staying with me until we could find a foster home. I asked him what it was and where he had gotten it. He told me that it was his mothers and then Amy's and that he had taken it before we'd left the house. It was evidence; it had been on the little girl's dead body and thus should be bagged and tagged."
"So why wasn't it?" I asked feeling slightly annoyed that this woman seemed to know more about my Ken than I did.
"I couldn't take it from him, I told him that he'd have to keep it hidden if he wanted to keep it. I said that if anyone from the station, even Naoto, saw it they would take it away from him. He promised me that he would hide it where no one would ever look, and that he would always keep that hiding place in a safe place and close by. He never actually told me where he hid it."
"Can't you tell us anything else? That doesn't give us much to go on," Nagi asked, she sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Thinking back to everything that had happened in that part of her life. She smiled and nodded,
"Only one more thing, he showed me inside the locket, apparently every girl could put pictures of whatever they wanted into the locket, there were two. One in each side. Amy chose to put in one picture of her mother and father on their wedding day and one of her and Ken playing on the Grand piano in his bedroom, Kumagoro, his plush rabbit, was sat on top of the piano. It was cute. I'm sorry I couldn't be any more help. But I must be going, my husband will be worried and I need to put my daughter to bed." She explained and gave a bow,
"Can you find your way out?" Nagi asked, she nodded and waved goodbye telling us to say hi to Ken from her next time we saw him. We nodded and watched her leave. I turned to face Nagi who just sighed, "Did that help at all?" I shook my head, I didn't think it did. "I'm sorry, I tracked her down earlier today, I thought she would know more about it."
"You tried, what's that?" I asked finally noticing the angry looking red mark running along his cheek. He sighed and ran his thumb across the wound chuckling slightly as if it was nothing out of the ordinary.
"Farfarello and Schuldig thought that I was betraying them or something, I provided a cover before they got too suspicious though otherwise it would have been a lot worse, it's happened before." He explained "Even when I'm not betraying them," he smiled softly. I growled lightly, once you got past the whole 'supposedly your enemy' factor Nagi was a really sweet kid and didn't deserve to be treated like that.
"Why do you stay with them if they treat you so badly?" He shrugged,
"They're family, anyway if you don't need any more help then I'd best be getting back," I shook my head and grabbed hold of his arm.
"I have a better idea, you're a smart kid, you heard everything that women said, if I take you with me back to Koneko, back to Ken's room you can help me find this key. If it won't get you into any trouble that is," he stared at me for a moment, probably trying to work out if it was a trap or not. "It's not a trap Nagi, you're not here as Prodigy well I'm not here as Abyssinian, I'm just Fujimiya Ran. She said that Ken would keep it close, which means it will most likely be somewhere in his room. I've spent a lot of time in there, I need someone with a new perspective, someone who will see things with fresh eyes."
"Schwartz won't notice if I'm missing, I usually stay out of their way anyway, what about the others from Weiss?" I smirked,
"They've been avoiding me, listen kid, I don't have a clue why I'm admitting this to you of all people but I need someone to help me out on this and strangely enough I'm asking you. So will you do it?" He gave a gently nod and I smirked, if truth be told I hoped that everything went Nagi's way and that he got out of Schwartz. He deserved a chance to be normal…then again…didn't we all…
WKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWKWow, sixteen chapters, I can't believe it's made it this far n.n well there was no mention of Ken or Yuuki in this chapter but I had to get Schwartz and Nagi and Ran and Arashi and all that junk in here so there just wasn't time. I had a lot of people saying about how they didn't think the witness statement in the last chapter was very accurate because of things like Ken not wanting to talk about being raped by such a close family friend and him being too young to understand what rape was.
All I can say to that is, I knew that as I was typing it, only problem was, it was REALLY late over here, I was running out of time to write it and didn't want to have to postpone updating it. I also didn't want to have to write pages upon pages upon pages about a small boy explaining how he was raped because it's not something I really wanted to do. And also I don't know how to go about something like that and keep it R rated so you'll just have to forgive me for that n.n
Oh and the reviewer that helped me out last chapter and had the idea of the police report was Gillian Sillis, just to give her the credit she deserves n.n thanks Gillie n.n