A/N: I had intended for this chapter to be all Asami POV with the lead up to what happened but then muse was all like 'nope' so here we are XD

"THAT FUCKING BASTARD!" Akihito yelled after listening to the voice message.

His friends jumped in their seats at his outburst and looked over at him with wide, concerned eyes.

"Aki…?" Takato ventured as he reached out for him but Akihito stalked off towards the door.

"Somethings happened," was all he said by way of explanation, "I have to go."

Rage boiled in his veins and he let it consume him. Overwhelming anger drove him forward, narrowed his focus, and made him want to act. The lurking desperation and despair would shut him down if he let it take over.

Because he knew Asami would not have said those words, left that message, unless he truly believed he wouldn't make it out alive.

Akihito was angry. Angry at Asami for giving up, angry at whoever dared to hurt his soulmate, angry at the fact that their reunion was postponed. Because mark his words, he was getting Asami back, if only so that man could tell him his feelings to his face. He would drag him back from hell if he had to.

He left his friend's apartment to find all three of his guards frantically on the phone. Oshiro looked up and ended his call.

"Takaba-sa-" he started but Akihito cut right over him.

"I know. He left me a voice message. Take me to Sion." The guard's eyes widened in surprise but he nodded and led the way to the car. "What do you know about what's happening?"

"There was an ambush just outside the airport," Oshiro explained as he pulled the vehicle out into traffic. The other guard with them remained on the phone, clearly trying to get more information and just as clearly getting nowhere. "Two of our men are dead, Kirishima-san and Asami-sama are missing, and Suoh-san is en route to the hospital with multiple bullet wounds."

"Asami's injured," Akihito said dully as the rage ebbed slightly, leaving room for despair to creep forward. He pushed it away by summoning up his anger towards whoever hurt his soulmate. He would not let he bastards away with this. "He left me a voice message and he sounded like he was in a lot of pain. I could hear gunfire in the background too."

"Did he say anything that might help us find out who did it?"

"No. Just something he needs to tell me to my face." Akihito turned to look out the window and missed the soft, understanding look Oshiro gave through the rear-view mirror. He watched the traffic pass by unseeing as he wished desperately for Asami to be okay.

VFVFVFVFVFVFVFVF

Sion was deceptively quiet as though it was a normal day at the office. Until you reached the security floors, then all hell broke loose.

People were yelling down their phone lines, running around between stations, running out of the building, looking generally frazzled and panicked. Akihito walked through the chaos like a small area of deceptive calm flanked by his on duty guard team. People stopped to stare at Akihito with mixtures of sadness and pity. They all thought Asami was dead or would be dead soon enough. It just fuelled his rage and hardened his resolve.

Asami wasn't dead. Akihito was certain he would feel if his soulmate died.

So all that was left was to drag the big bastard back and make whoever it was that dared to take him pay dearly.

The doors to the heart of Sion flung open ahead of them and the room paused as Akihito entered. Many thought the heart of Sion would be Asami's office, it's where he made all the decisions after all, but that was wrong. It was here in the nick-named 'control room'. It was like something out of a movie with computers and screens lining the walls and people with high-tech headsets filling the many seats. In the middle was a huge table like surface that was a massive screen with smaller touch screen sections around the outside. It was the beating heart of all the security teams. Most of the systems could be accessed remotely with the right security clearance and the right programs but there was something about being here that made everything seem more real. More urgent.

"Takaba-sama," Ueda said by way of greeting as they approached were he stood at the table. He nodded his acknowledgement of the other guards before focusing back on Akihito with a grim look. "Seeing as both Asami-sama and Kirishima-san are MIA with Suoh-san in the hospital, I've taken over command of Sion as the highest ranking personnel left. I've already started sending out agents to gather information and we have men at the scene of the ambush trying to get any clues. As of yet, there have been no demands and no one has stepped forward to claim credit. It means we have no idea who we are dealing with or what they want. We have no idea if Asami-sama is even still alive."

"He's alive," Akihito said with conviction. "I would feel it if not."

Ueda nodded and carried on, "Because we don't know who took him or why, we don't know if they intend to keep him alive or it's only until some appointed time. There are a lot of people who want Asami-sama dead or would profit from it. Most are here in Tokyo, and even some throughout Japan, but there could be international players in this as well. We can only hope not as time is critical right now and information may be hard to find."

As the man paused to receive more reports back from other staff, Akihito realised with a start that he was reporting to him like he would Asami. With Asami missing, who else was left to take charge? No one. No one could replace Asami. But that wasn't stopping Ueda who stepped up immediately and it wasn't going to stop Akihito either. He was going to run this operation and he was going to be there when they found him and brought him back. No one was going to stop him from saving his soulmate.

Akihito listened to the reports with Ueda and just tried to take it all in. He found himself asking questions, throwing out ideas, and was surprised when no one disregarded him. Every single person treated him with respect and allowed him into their discussions without question. It took him a while to figure out that he was being treated as the commander, the leader of this entire endeavour. He had truly thought that he would have to argue until he was blue in the face to be actively a part of this operation. But here they were. He wondered if it had something to do with his determined look or the fact that his guard force included him naturally and they were currently running Sion.

As much as he appreciated that wordless understanding and respect, it didn't help when no one could tell him what had happened. Oh, they knew about the ambush. But as the hours wore on, no more information came forward about who or why.

"Takaba-sama, you should get some sleep." Ueda's voice stirred him from his thoughts and Akihito turned to look at the man blankly, his brain unable to comprehend what he was saying. "Come on, let's get you home for some rest."

He gently guided Akihito away from the control room and towards the elevator. The rest of the floor was dark and mostly empty barring a few small areas of light scattered about. The quiet was oppressive and Akihito suddenly realised how tired he really was. His eyes burned and his mind was fog while his body was struggled to keep his coordination.

"What's the time?" Akihito asked blearily.

"2am."

No wonder. The day had passed by in a blur. Once the anger had faded he had been left feeling numb and slightly lost. He didn't even remember if he had eaten but his stomach was all twisted up in knots so he didn't think he could even if he tried. The ride to the penthouse was dead silent and almost grim.

"Please call me if you need anything," Ueda said as they parted and Akihito nodded his acknowledgement.

He was left facing the penthouse door on his own. It loomed large and dread coiled in his gut. He was back at their home. The home they shared together but Asami wasn't there. He wasn't coming home tonight and maybe never again and the last thing Akihito wanted was to be in there alone. But what could he do? Go and stay in a hotel? That didn't appeal either.

Stealing himself, he opened the door and crept inside. It was oppressively dark and the shadows warped the penthouse into something less inviting and more nightmarish. Akihito padded through the house not turning on the lights and slipped into the bathroom. The white tiles reflected the light when he switched it on and he flinched at the sudden brightness. He tried to ignore his surroundings as he quickly washed himself off and padded into the bedroom for his pyjamas. The room felt large and empty and the bed taunted him with memories of their time spent together in its soft comfort.

Akihito dithered in the bedroom for long minutes before finally grabbing a blanket and pillow and making his way back out into the lounge. He couldn't sleep in their bed. Not tonight. Not when he knew Asami was missing and hurt and out there somewhere. The couch was comfortable enough that he had fallen asleep on it many times but when he lay down, sleep was nowhere in sight.

He tried to calm his mind, focus on the feeling of Asami. When he had been recovering in the hospital, he could sense his direction like a little GPS marker and he needed that now. But his mind was swirling with desperation and it would not stop. Thoughts about his soulmate, his injury, and what he could be going through right at that moment kept him wide eyed and panicked. His heart raced in his chest at the thought of the very real possibility of torture. They weren't nice people that wanted Asami. He was ambushed with guns blazing, after all. And worst of all, Asami had truly thought he was a goner when he made that phone call. It might be all he had left; this apartment, that one message of his voice, and some naughty photos and videos from days that felt like an age ago, for all that the time past could be easily counted in hours.

Akihito tossed and turned for hours, until the faint like of dawn crept through the large balcony windows. Giving up, he padded into the kitchen and flicked the lights on. Asami always thought it was funny that he stress cooked but right now, he didn't know how else to distract himself. The more time that passed without answers, the less likely they would find him. But there was nothing Akihito could do to help right now.

Except…

People had been working through the night for him and Asami. They might not have had the chance to eat yet. He could do something. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Changing his plans from stress cooking breakfast, Akihito pulled out piles of ingredients and set to cooking up a feast. He had just been shopping the morning Asami was due home because he had expected them to have a few days in. All the food he had planned to eat over a few days with the two of them plus all the extras he always kept stored went into making a massive series of bentos. As he multitasked the cooking of multiple recipes at once, his mind could focus only at the task at hand, and he temporarily forgot his worry.

For all that, it wasn't the same happy cooking session with music blaring either. He cooked with a sort of grim determination and single minded efficiency born from sleep deprivation and the need to be doing anything to occupy himself. Akihito only paused to flick off a message to Ueda to ask him to bring more eggs and more containers before he was off again. The food piled up and he ran out of containers, plates, and bench space.

His heart leapt for joy when he heard the penthouse door open but Ueda's voice calling out a greeting sent it plummeting down to his feet. The sudden lurching of emotions was jarring and he struggled to regain his focus back on the task at hand.

"Takaba-sama…" Ueda appeared with the requested goods in hand and Kamiya popped out from behind him with even more containers. "Takaba-sama, you're supposed to be resting."

"I couldn't sleep," Akihito admitted and his voice came out raw and pained and foreign to his own ears.

"What are you going to do with all this?" he said incredulously as he surveyed the room.

"Take it to Sion," Akihito mumbled as he accepted the new containers and began to load them up. "People have been working nonstop to help and this is all I can do. This is all I can do to help."

"You don't have to-"

Akihito slammed a container down on the bench interrupting him and leant over it as he tried to hold back the tears threatening to overwhelm him. "The one thing. The one thing that I could do that could actually help, that could actually be useful and maybe save him. I can't. I can't do it."

His shoulders shook and he sank to the floor as the tears finally burst forth and steamed down his face. Once they had started, they wouldn't stop and all he could do was sit there and cry. Cry for his missing soulmate and his fear over whether or not he would see him again. A firm hand clasped his shoulder while another gently used a soft cloth to wipe away his tears.

"When I was in hospital," Akihito started through his tears and hiccups, "I could feel where Asami was. The direction. And sometimes afterwards, if I was lying in bed late at night, the same thing would happen. And now, when that would actually be useful, when it might make the difference between life and death, I can't do it."

He sobbed harder at the admittance and arms wrapped around him in a hug. But it wasn't Asami, it didn't smell right, it didn't feel right, and he only sobbed more. He cried until he had no more tears, until all that he was left with was a feeling of desolate numbness. When the tears finally cleared, he let Kamiya pull him to his feet and dully noticed that Ueda had finished up the cooking and packaged up all the food. A glass of water and a sleeping pill was pressing into his hands and he let himself be steered out of the kitchen. He dug his feet in when Kamiya tried to lead him to the bedroom and instead headed back towards the couch with a broken 'I can't'.

The pill kicked in surprisingly quickly, probably because his body was desperately screaming for sleep, and it was a relief when the world went black.

VFVFVFVFVFVFVFVF

Pain. Bright flairs of pain radiated out from his shoulder and thigh to consume his entire body. The air was cold against his feverish skin and the constriction of his arms only sent more spasms of pain through him. His head lolled before it was pulled back by his hair and he grunted at the action but the pain from that was minimal compared to the rest. His eyes watered but through the blurred vision he could make out the dull grey of concrete walls surrounding them. A figure of a person stood in front of him with a few more behind that but he couldn't yet focus in on them.

"Ah, thank you for joining us," a deep, gleeful voice sounded out in front of him, "Asami Ryuichi."