A/N: This chapter is unfortunately half author's note ramble. It is a sad thing, really, when I can get away with rambling on in this fashion, but this is the state of the world in which we live. I also shamelessly grovel for reviews in this part, and warn you in advance. It is not pretty, and I'm not proud of it, but there you go.

All disclaimers and warnings continue to apply, please refer to notes before the Prologue—i.e. still rated R, still not owned by me, please don't copy or archive elsewhere without my permission (drop me a line if you'd like to do so first), still making no pretence of accuracy, canonical or otherwise, still unbeta'd and still under construction, etc. etc.. Don't blame me, later; I really did try to disclaim this thing about as thoroughly as anyone could.

It is equally not my fault—and let me take a minute to rant—about how irritatingly long and complicated this fic has become. I blame someone else entirely, quite possibly the kid who made fun of me in grade school, for this sorry state. Honestly, this started out less—plotty—than it has become, and therefore, there is a delay warning—I have to think again about the next bit, and that never bodes well. I had a vague idea of how I wanted this fic to go when I started, and it's still going in that general direction, but it's kind of taking the scenic route instead of the assigned, clearly marked highway on my easy-to-read map, and I think I'm being confusing, which means I have to re-jig a fair amount now. In the meantime, I'm wasting time with author's notes.

Thank you again to everyone who has read and reviewed thus far; hope you continue to enjoy.

Chapter 13: Cue the Cavalry

"Ken!"

This was a new one, Ken thought dazedly. He hadn't yet had any delusions where Yohji came to visit. Odd, that, since he chatted regularly with both Omi and Aya, now. He wasn't displeased; seeing Aya decomposing was disturbing, and he liked Yohji—aside from everything, when he bothered, the Yohji he remembered often had interesting things to say. But this Yohji was looking shocked and horrified and appalled, and Ken wasn't in the mood for chatting right now, or calming Yohji down from whatever upset he had suffered. So Ken blinked Yohji away.

He blinked, and blinked, but Yohji didn't go away. Alarmed, Ken wondered if he had been drugged again.

Because no, this Yohji didn't go away; this Yohji was more annoying, a little smellier, solid in a way that his dreams hadn't been, and when he touched Ken, it hurt. Yohji, alive and sweaty and bloody and real, whose light, teasing tones offered comfort and normalcy and safety even as he cut away the ropes binding Ken down to the stinking, stained mattress; but even when they were gone, Ken couldn't move, couldn't get up, and Yohji was touching him and moving him and it hurt, it hurt ...

"... Yo... Yo ... " he whispered, his voice raspy and strained—he knew somewhere between the coughing and the screaming, at some point, his voice had just given out. He couldn't remember when, couldn't remember how long, because neither Omi nor Aya had needed him to speak aloud... and there were things he wanted to say, but his thoughts weren't organized, his body wasn't listening, and the words wouldn't form; he was cold, cold and Yohji was still speaking, smiling at him broadly, relief and fear naked in Yohji's eyes; still murmuring soft nonsensical reassurance and calling him irritating nicknames and scolding him gently for missing his shifts over the past few days, and Ken wanted to apologize for that, for all the fuss, feeling hugely embarrassed at the state he was in, realizing as he now did that this Yohji may be real ... but his voice was still not saying what he meant it to say, and all he could manage were gasps and attempts to say Yohji's name, even if he wanted to ask where Aya was, what Omi was doing ... if they were ok ... had they saved the kids, were they ok, he needed to know ... they had to be ok, and even if Aya was dead, at least Omi, at least Omi had to be ok ... he wanted to explain that he hadn't given them away, even if it didn't matter and Kobayashi-sama was right and they'd given him up, even then, he'd never give them away ...

And then there was Aya, suddenly, looking as beautiful and perfect as ever--and Ken started to shake. Started to shake in relief, because it was lies, it had all been lies, he'd been right and it had all been a lie and Aya was safe and Aya was fine and ...

"Aya," Yohji snapped, the jarringly harsh tone cutting across Ken's confused thoughts, "give me ..."

But Aya had taken one look at Ken and was already stripping off his long mission coat to lay over the younger boy, to wrap it around him and pick him up, ignoring Ken's cry of protest, his weak struggle in a completely ineffectual attempt to stand; Yohji still speaking, " ... easy, Kenken... easy ... don't try to move, just relax ...", and Aya interrupting, curtly ordering him to simply, "Be still." Then they were running toward the car, Ken slung over Aya's shoulder, and every step Aya took shook fresh waves of pain through Ken's body, and even though he was glad they had found him, even though he knew he had no right to ask for anything more, he wanted to ask them to wait, to stop, to let him catch his breath; he couldn't breathe and it hurt so much ...

He was wrapped in something heavy and warm that smelled like blood and sweat and ... Aya, and it was comforting, even if he couldn't feel much of anything past the deep, bone-numbing cold. His head was in someone's lap, and someone was holding his hand and pressing another hand hard against his side and telling him not to worry. He heard the low, soothing rumble of an engine, smelled soft leather, and tried to smile. He wasn't worried, he wanted to say. The pain had drifted away, and he was feeling a lot better. He would have said something, if he'd been able, but he wasn't so he let it go.

But ... "The kids?" he managed to whisper, because he needed to know. Because ... he couldn't remember why, but he knew it was very, very important.

Reassurances followed, then, quickly, telling him they were fine and everyone was safe and he shouldn't worry, and he was irritated, because he couldn't decide if the voice was telling him the truth or not. He was sure, after a moment, that it was Omi talking to him, although he wasn't so sure he could stay awake, even though that's what Omi seemed to think was important. But Omi wasn't always right, he knew, even though he liked Omi lots, and knew Omi was a lot smarter than him, and even though he usually tried to do more or less what Omi wanted. Omi was in charge, and while surprises annoyed Aya, it truly upset Omi when things did not go the way they should. Omi was just less vocal about it than Aya, and it made Omi happy when the others did what he asked. Omi didn't usually ask for much anyway, and Ken liked making people happy. If he couldn't always be, he saw no reason others shouldn't be.

Omi would understand later. He'd tried, but it was just too much effort to stay awake.

Ken woke in a room he didn't recognize. It was white and too-bright and full of people and shouting, and once again, he found he couldn't move. Panic and despair coursed through him—he had thought ... he had thought ... but why would he think that a dream, even a pain-filled one, would be any more real than another? Fuzzy, indistinct flashes of someone holding him down, someone trying to inject him with a clear fluid in a large syringe floated through his brain. There was a needle in his arm, and he had a strange, hateful, floaty feeling. Drugs, he thought hazily, he'd been drugged again. That explained it then. He glanced up. His eyes wouldn't focus, but the room was green and white. He definitely hadn't seen this room before. He tried to force his body to move.

Someone dressed in white leaned over him holding a frightening looking steel implement, said something he couldn't understand, and pulled away the sheet. He was naked beneath it, and his muscles still wouldn't obey, he couldn't move, but he tried, he tried and he yelled in protest even if no one could hear because they were touching him, again, touching him—they were touching where he'd been cut, gloved hands pressing down where he'd been burned, and there was pain, so much pain and ...

"Ken."

Ken moaned softly, eyes sliding shut but not stopping his efforts to get free, because while he couldn't stop trying, he didn't want to hope anymore; he was tired of wishing for an Aya that never truly appeared, he didn't ...

"Ken. You're at Kimura Hospital. Stop fighting. You're safe. Everyone's safe. It's okay." Aya's voice, straightforward and commanding and severe, and no mistaking it.

Ken blinked at that, pausing. He opened his eyes to see Aya, crouched down right in front of him, and suddenly, suddenly he was crying, helplessly, and the tears were sliding down his face, but he couldn't move; he was tied down and exposed and he didn't like it and he couldn't even lift a hand to wipe the unaccustomed wetness away ...but there was Aya, Aya ... and behind him, he could see Yohji, and Omi, all standing there, looking worried and tired and ...

Aya was saying something, wiping the tears off his face for him. Aya's touch was gentler than Ken had ever remembered it being. Ken tried moving his hand again, and found this time he could; he reached that hand toward the man standing beside his bed, finding soft cloth and he clutched it in a death grip, pulling, trying to anchor himself. Trying to make sure none of them faded away again. Trying to make sure they didn't leave him alone.

But it was too much. Darkness ate away at his vision, and he tumbled helplessly into it.

"No, lie still. You're safe. Remember. You're in the hospital, Ken."

Ken jerked away again as the doctor's gloved hand touched his skin, eyes still closed and seeming unconscious, making a small sound of distress before he turned his head and blinked up at Aya.

"Aya?" A whisper of sound.

"Be still, Ken. I'm here." Aya leaned back against the wall, trying to look out of the way and inconspicuous, and hoping that no one would ask him to leave. He was trying to keep his voice low and soothing, but it kept coming out rough and angry and broken, and he just prayed that no one noticed the hitch. The sharp-eyed doctor in question looked up and nodded encouragingly at him over Ken's head, busy hands quiet for a moment, and Aya relaxed imperceptibly. He ought to be used to it, but he felt young and desperate and overwhelmed, as he always did, in this place where they all looked at him as a boy, beardless face pale and stricken, helpless and clumsy and out of place. Since he'd arrived, he'd been told constantly to move out of the way, to step aside; other voices asked who had let the kid in and what he was doing there. Aya was grateful that this doctor, at least, thought he was doing something right.

After the initial bustle, the hospital staff had kept them waiting in this empty curtained off "room" for hours, only the drip of the IV to keep them company. Apparently, Ken didn't have any truly serious injuries, by medical standards—no internal injuries, and nothing that required immediate surgery, or so they said. And there had been some kind of traffic accident shortly after Ken's arrival. So despite the suspected sepsis and dehydration and possible pneumonia, they had simply hooked Ken up to a number of tubes and ominous looking monitors that beeped and blinked and whirred, drawn a frighteningly large amount of blood at various intervals, covered him with a single thin sheet, and forced them to wait. Mercifully, Ken had been in and out of painful consciousness for most of that time, and Yohji, surprisingly understanding and comforting, had been there to glare at or sit with or leave them alone as needed. From time to time, a nurse or orderly dropped by, and fiddled with something, or drew another vial of blood, and left. At one point, a nurse had come and tried to threaten Aya into leaving for a period of time. Aya had not, and eventually the man bent to Aya's obstinacy and made use of him to turn and position Ken while he rubbed the shivering Ken down with water and alcohol, cleaning off a good portion of the blood and filth as best as he could. They took Ken away a few times, once for several hours, telling Aya it was to operate and set the bone, after which Ken had returned, pale as a ghost, unconscious, and with a soft cast covering a good part of his left leg. The hospital had also asked each of them to give blood, although if it had been needed, they all knew that only Omi's would have been of any real use at all to Ken. Somewhere, there had been an explanation from some kindly but harried-looking nurse that the doctors were concerned that Ken may have been drugged—the story Omi had apparently given involved a bar and a bad crowd--and so the medical staff wanted to limit what they gave him—leaving Ken in what Aya saw as an untenable amount of pain. But Aya couldn't correct her, as Yohji carefully explained to him--when he felt the impulse to hurt and maim and kill them all because hadn't Ken suffered enough and how dared they not give him anything he needed--because Ken may well have been drugged or poisoned, it was hard to say. And because Aya needed, needed to trust that these people knew what they were doing.

Once again, Aya had no other choice.

So Aya forced himself to stay with Ken, and each tortured breath Ken drew was both a delight and a dagger in his heart. Omi had drawn Aya aside at one point--over Aya's objections and reluctance to leave Ken even for a mere second--and forced him to listen while he carefully explained that he'd signed Ken in under an assumed last name, repeated the details of the story he'd concocted, and made Aya repeat back Ken's assumed name and birthdate, before sharply commanding a startled Aya, as Bombay, to say as little as possible to anyone—better yet, to not speak at all--unless absolutely necessary for Ken's treatment. But then Yohji and Omi had left, apparently needing to go off and deal with mission reports and shop openings and other mundane things before morning, before the doctor returned. Left alone in this dimly lit place with Ken, the sun through the window barely visible on the horizon, Aya was slowly and visibly losing his hold on control.

"Aya?" Ken's voice was a shaky rasp, his hand flailing, the rest of him still trying and failing to curl into himself; needle in a wasted arm pulling the wrong way, setting off alarms. Aya moved forward and pushed firmly at a too-thin shoulder, ignoring the flinch, forcing Ken's body to lie flat, before kneeling by the bed and taking one of Ken's hands in his. He dropped a light hand onto Ken's dirty, matted hair, heart clenching when Ken shuddered reflexively away even from that small touch.

They'd tried, but he had threatened violence convincingly enough that they hadn't dared to tie Ken down again. Aya had been terrified, was still terrified, that they'd just kick him out instead, and do what they wanted to Ken anyway. But they let him stay.

"It's ok, Ken. You're still at the hospital. Just relax." Aya wanted more than anything else in the world was to gather the other man close and take him somewhere else. Anywhere else. But he ignored the voice screaming in his head to take Ken and run somewhere safe, kept his voice even, held Ken's hand and left another on Ken's shoulder, a weight to remind Ken to hold still. To let the doctor do whatever painful thing she was doing to him.

"I could give him another sedative, perhaps. He's had a lot already, though, given we still don't have those tox screens, and since I'm not sure what is already in his system, it might ... "

"N--no ..." Ken jerked sharply, and Aya's hand on his shoulder tightened. The doctor's words had been professional and considering, as if Ken was just another patient, just another body.

Ken would hate to have any female see him like this, Aya thought. He'd be so embarrassed.

"Shhhh." Aya placed his hand flat over the sweat-damp forehead, and nodded sharply at the doctor to just finish, already. Ken hated drugs. Ken hated hospitals. Ken had been through the gods only knew what horror. Ken was bloodied and burned and crying for the gods' sake, slow tears that leaked from the sides of his eyes, running over broken skin and into matted hair. Even drugged to the gills as he was, unless they knocked him out completely, Ken wasn't going to become calm. Ken was freaking out—with more than just cause--and was liable only to get worse. This idiot doctor just needed to fucking finish, already—and she had damn well better do a fucking decent job--so he could get his boyfriend out of here and somewhere that smelled less like antiseptic and pain.

The doctor just shrugged and bent back down to her work. Aya lifted his hand from Ken's shoulder to swipe a shirtsleeve across his own forehead, beaded with sweat, and Ken's hand tightened instantly on his other.

"Don't leave me!"

"I'm not going anywhere. Rest." Aya wiped his hand quickly on his pants and moved to replace it. The doctor was pulling the sheet aside, having finished with the gashes on Ken's chest, and moving down to a particularly nasty burn at the base of his left hip.

But Ken was growing increasingly agitated, eyes wild and unfocussed. "No ... no more, please, please, they're ... they're c-coming ... I c-can't ... they're ... " Ken screamed soundlessly, a horrible grating sound as the doctor's hand moved, nearly succeeding in throwing himself off the bed and restrained only by the quick reflexes of Aya and a doctor possibly trained to deal with drug addicts or freaking out assassins, or both.

Ken was shaking and white when they'd had him pinned back to the exam bed, injected with even more sedatives, and despite the drugs whispering frantically in an eerie monotone. "My name is Siberian ... my name is Siberian ... Aya, I didn't tell them anything, I promise, please come Aya, please, don't be dead, Aya ... my name is ..."

It seemed to take endless hours, as the doctor stitched and wrapped and cut and cleaned. Ken, eyes glazed and uncomprehending, periodically tried to curl up on his side as Aya sat by the narrow bed and stroked the filthy dark hair, other hand either holding Ken's or firmly on Ken's shoulder anchoring him to the bed, all the while reminding Ken in low tones, over and over, that Ken was safe and he was there and Ken needed to lie still so the doctor could help him. Aya could see that Ken, when he was lucid, was trying his best to do what Aya asked, despite the uncontrollable shivering.

"Ok, Ken, almost done now, you've done really well, really well, Ken, I'm going to take you home soon ..."

Ken had been gazing blankly at the desperately gibbering Aya, his eyes dull with pain and despair, but at Aya's words his focus sharpened slightly and his hand clutched Aya's more tightly.

"Promise?" Another whisper of sound, scratchy and almost unintelligible.

Aya swallowed, not even quite sure what Ken was asking, but he was past caring. "I promise."

One last bleeding tear, in a particularly bad place and Aya wouldn't, he wouldn't think about what that meant, Ken twisting away, apologizing and apologizing but unable to hold still enough for the doctor to finish until Aya, blinded by tears, held him still, and it was over.

The doctor sat back. Ken was still trembling, whiter than the sheet covering him, his hair and eyes dark against it all.

The doctor cleared her throat, and looked up at Aya. "I need you to leave. I need to talk to ..." she checked the chart, "Kato-san?"

Ken whimpered softly, grip tightening painfully on Aya's hand.

"Ken," Aya said, because it was important she know, it was ... "His name is Ken."

"I need to talk to Ken-kun, alone," she repeated and then came over in front of Ken and crouched down. "I need to talk to you, just for a moment. Your friend can wait just outside. Okay?"

Ken looked at her dully. Her hair was streaked with grey, and there was kindness in her eyes. He shuddered. Looked at Aya, and then back, and nodded.

Aya let go of the hand he'd been holding, and resisted the urge to argue. Resisted the urge to refuse. He turned and left, and stood in the hallway, not really knowing what to think or feel or do. He just stood.

Aya gave them five minutes, before going back in. Ken's hospital bed had him leaning halfway up, supported by pillows. His features were tense with pain, and he looked almost translucently pale and somehow diminished in a way Aya had never seen. Aya went immediately to him, crouching low beside the bed, taking Ken's free hand. The doctor was still talking, but Aya was past listening to anything she said. Ken's fingers were cold and stiff, and Aya wrapped his hand around them, trying to infuse Ken with his own warmth. It didn't work.

Aya looked up at the doctor, rudely cutting off the meaningless flow. "Are we done here?"

The doctor, face impassive, nodded.

I lied. End of Chapter 13 ... Chapter 14, which is actually Twelfth Night, shall follow ...

Apologies for any errors, location, canonical, medical or otherwise, as I am neither a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, and I have no access to anyone I could bribe into telling me all about stuff, so I really have no idea about most of the above-- please feel free to tell me all about how wrong I am or how large parts of the above are medically impossible, and not only will I be grateful, future readers of revised versions will also thank you (presupposing as I am, with a great deal of hope, that there would be future readers).

Or point out my spelling errors—I went back and read the earlier bits—and cringed, cringed at all the errors (I really hate spell check and never use it, and despite my best proof-reading, I always miss stuff—and so they remain uncorrected, because I can't figure out how to correct without re-uploading everything on this interface, and I'm focused on getting this draft out right now, so will take care of that when it's done—please send me a note if you chance to notice anything that sticks out at you, so I can make sure to catch them all).

Anyway, the point is ... please comment/review/critique? Please? Pleasepleaseplease ... The next part involves plot, and the sheer amount of work involved in the plotty portion is making me want to run away or confess somewhere to the error of my ways in attempting any kind of plot at all ...