Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz and its characters sadly do not belong to me.

Warnings: AU, eventual yaoi (it might take a while for me to get there), some violence

Pairings: Ran/Ken, Youji/Omi

Author's Notes: I know, I know, it's been quite a while since I updated (assuming anyone is still reading who cares), and my only excuse is that work and grad school decision making ate my time. Hopefully now that one of those processes at least is finished, updates may come more often. But don't hold your breath.

Chapter 16

It had been a struggle, but Omi finally managed to get Ken calm enough to return to the house without trying to bolt off after Ran every few seconds. Even then, he would hardly have described the young man's mental state as calm. Ken kept pacing, tugging at his hair, and muttering to himself and Omi about the bloody revenge he was going to exact on Ran's captors when he caught them.

Omi placated him as best he could by reassuring him that Youji would do his best to follow and capture Farfarello. Then, once he had managed to get Ken seated, he quickly handed him over to the servants to have his wounds tended to, grabbed his crossbow, and set off after Youji. There was a chance that in following the strange man who had attacked them, Youji was walking right into a trap, and if that were the case, Omi had no intentions of letting him go alone.

Thankfully, his dire forebodings did not prove to be true. Youji was perfectly unharmed when Omi found him. He was, however, angry and discouraged.

"He got away," he said when he saw Omi. "He had a horse waiting, and I couldn't keep up. I followed the trail to the main road, but that's as far as I was able to get. He stopped bleeding somewhere along the way, and once he made it to the main road, the tracks were just too hard to pick out from all the rest. I might be able to follow them if I could pick them up again in a less used area, but the best shot would be if they left the road again, and that could be miles from here."

"I'm not sure," Omi said. "There's enough traffic along the road that they probably won't want to use it much. They're a memorable bunch, if the one we saw was any indication, and it would be rather obvious to anyone passing that Ran's a captive. That would draw too much attention to them."

"I'm not sure they're worried about drawing attention any more," Youji said, frowning. "They made off with Ran right in front of his own house. That's hardly subtle."

"Well, if they aren't worried about it, it should be easier to follow them," Omi pointed out. "Come on, let's head back. We'll need horses of our own to do this properly, and we'd better tell Ken what's going on before he manages to bully the servants into letting him come out here himself."

Ken was indeed trying to do just that when Youji and Omi returned, and seeing them arrive without Ran only made him more agitated.

"Where's Ran?" he demanded the minute they were close enough for speaking.

Youji explained how Farfarello had managed to evade him. "We're going to get horses and follow as far as we can and maybe see if we can pick up the trail again, but it could take several days."

Ken nodded and stood up, brushing off Omi, who had been trying to check the bandages the servants had wrapped him in. "I'll go pack," he said.

"Ken, have you run mad?" Omi asked, trying to shoo his friend back into the chair. "Those aren't exactly light injuries you've got. I know you're anxious about Ran, but you're not in any state to be traveling."

The look Ken turned on him was so full of fury that Omi found himself taking a step back. "They took Ran," Ken snarled, something angry and animalistic in his voice. "You don't honestly expect me to just sit here and wait for them to bring him back, do you?"

"But..." Omi started to protest again.

"I've traveled when I've been injured before," Ken said. "If you want me to stay here, you'd better kill me. Otherwise, I'm going with you." And seeing Omi reaching out to try to stop him again, he wrenched himself away and made for his room, leaving Omi gazing fretfully after him.

"Youji..." Omi said, trying to appeal to his friend for help.

But Youji only shook his head. "He's dead serious, and I can't think of any way of trying to stop him that isn't going to involve violence of some kind, if not now, then later. Whatever we do to him, he's not going to stay incapacitated for long, and when he's able to get back on his feet again, he'll be mad as hell and ready to take it out on whatever poor soul happens to be near him. I think we'd better just take him at his word and let him come. At least if he's with us, we can try to make sure he doesn't strain himself too much."

Omi sighed heavily, but he had to admit that Youji had a point. "Well," he said finally, with a resigned note of despair in his voice, "I suppose we'd better go pack then."

/-/-/-/

"Gentlemen," Youji said gravely, "we appear to be at a bit of an impasse."

"I'll say," Ken muttered bitterly, scowling at the ground as if resentful that it refused to yield any usable tracks.

They had split up, each riding for hours in a chosen direction, but whoever their quarry were, they had hidden themselves well, either staying to portions of the road that were so heavily used that their tracks couldn't be distinguished, or covering their off-road tracks very carefully. When Youji, Omi, and Ken had returned to their appointed meeting place, none of them had anything to report but disappointment.

"We need to figure out at least a general direction if we're going to have any hope of catching them," Youji said. "Tracking doesn't seem to be doing any good at the moment. That having been said, what I propose is this. We use what little we know about where they might be headed and try to follow them that way."

"What do we know?" Ken asked, looking discouraged and angry.

"Well, we're making the assumption that Ran's mother was involved in all of this, and that she was fleeing from it when she settled here. So they should have taken her son to the place she came from."

"And we don't know where that is," Ken pointed out. "All we have to go on is south, and that's pretty broad. Too broad to track properly, anyway."

"Aha," Youji said. "That may be all you have to go on, but Omi and I came across something else when we were sorting through the papers."

"Ran's mother had a correspondent," Omi chimed in, and he quickly outlined the letters they had found to Ken, explaining their contents and the assumptions they had drawn from them.

"If we find this woman, she may be able to tell us exactly where Ran's mother came from, and therefore exactly where Ran has gone," Omi concluded.

Ken looked doubtful. "Are you even sure this woman is still alive?" he asked.

"No," Youji admitted, "but do you have a better idea? Right now, it's all we've got to go on, and it at least gets us going in the right direction, which is south. Unless you know something you're not telling us, I'd say we head that way and see what we can find."

Ken didn't look pleased with the idea, but he said, "I haven't got anything better to try."

"Well then," Youji said, "it's settled. We head south."

/-/-/-/

Aya slammed her book shut in disgust and laid her head on the desk. She was heartily sick of studying, and wished she could simply burn her books and be done with it. But it was no good, and she knew it. She might have gotten away with it in the short term; with Nagi as the only one of Takatori's guards left to watch her, chances were good she wouldn't be punished very severely. But eventually, the others would return, and then Schuldich would come and talk to her in that sickly sweet and persuasive way of his that left his words, said and unsaid, resonating in her head in a way she found mildly nauseating. That repetition would somehow manage to clear her head of everything else, and she would later find herself diligently at her books without quite knowing how it had happened. She hated those moments, hated the utter powerlessness she felt at her inability to control herself and hated Schuldich even more for inflicting that feeling on her.

There seemed to be some sort of commotion outside of her room, and Aya cautiously raised her head off of the desk to listen. There were voices, the sounds growing louder as they approached her door, and after a moment she was able to pick out the nasal tones of Schuldich and the firm commanding voice of Crawford. Wonderful. The rest of her tormentors had returned from wherever it was Takatori had sent them this time. They had already been gone for several weeks, but she had still hoped for at least a few more days with only Nagi to deal with. While he could hardly be described as friendly and he rarely ever spoke to her, he didn't threaten, cajole, or order her around the way the others did. He was utterly indifferent to her, but he wasn't cruel or hostile, and so she found him preferable to any of the others.

As she had expected, the voices outside increased in volume until they were right outside, culminating in a knock on her door. She bade them enter with a weary and sour call of, "Come in," and the door opened to reveal Crawford.

"Still at your books," he observed, seeing the pile on her desk. "Good." He nodded in satisfaction. "Our employer has requested that we make sure that you improve your performance on your next speaking test."

"I learn as fast as I learn, and no faster," Aya said defensively. "And I'm not sure that confining me and isolating me is the best way to make me learn." She eyed him warily as she spoke. Schuldich was standing at his shoulder, and given the other talents the man seemed to possess, it wouldn't have been a stretch to suppose he knew exactly what she was thinking. She tried to keep her mind as blank as possible, not wanting to reveal what she suspected they already knew, that she was perfectly capable of speaking without an accent, but refused to do so, partially out of a desire to see her brother, and partially out of sheer perversity.

"I rather thought you might say something like that," Crawford said, a half smile on his face, and Aya felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. That smile rarely boded well for her. "That is why our employer has requested that we remind you that yours isn't the only welfare riding on the results of your next test." And so saying, he stepped to one side, and Schuldich and Farfarello stepped forward, dragging between them the unconscious form of a human body. The light hit them, and Aya gasped.

It had been six years since she'd seen her brother, but she would have known him anywhere. He had let his hair grow longer around his face, and he had obviously gotten taller and finished the process of filling out that he had been starting when she'd been taken, but his face was still as she remembered it. Underneath the dirt and what looked suspiciously like bruises were features that were a more masculine version of hers. As she stared in shock, he seemed to stir, his face contorting briefly in pain before he opened his eyes. For a moment he simply stared dazedly around, but then he caught sight of her.

"Aya!" That hoarse and desperate voice was much deeper than the one of her memory, but the tones were still unmistakably those of her brother.

"Ran..." Aya whispered, too shocked to do anything more than stare at him. All these years, all the threats against her brother, and whenever she had asked to see him, she had been rebuffed. She had begun to think that she would never see him again, and yet here he was, without so much as a request on her part. Why?

"Aya!" Ran began to struggle, trying desperately to pull his arms free from the hold Schuldich and Farfarello had on him, trying to pull himself forward towards her.

"That's enough," Crawford's decisive voice cut through her shock. "She's convinced now, I think. Take him back."

Schuldich and Farfarello tightened their hold on their prisoner and began to drag him away, despite his tugging and attempts to dig his feet into the floor.

"Wait!" Aya cried, finally roused from her stupor. She rushed towards the door, towards her brother, one arm reaching out desperately to waylay him. "Wait, Ran!"

Her outstretched arm was caught by Crawford just as Schuldich kicked the door to her room, slamming it shut. She tried to reach it and open it, but found herself jerked abruptly backwards, Crawford's grip on her arm hard enough to bruise. She turned on him and tried to strike him with the fist of her free hand, but he simply caught her other wrist and dragged her over to her desk chair, releasing her with a shove that forced her back into it.

"Think carefully now," he said, gazing down at her dispassionately. "I know you've accused us of lying to you when we said we would harm your brother if necessary to force you to cooperate. Even if you've never said the words, you've thought them, I'm sure. Well, now you know that we don't make idle threats. I think you should put some serious consideration into whether you can afford to fail your next test or not."

"You're horrible!" Aya screamed. As childish as it was, she couldn't think of anything else to say to him. It was all she could do not to cry in front of him. Six years, and the first time she was allowed to see her brother, it was only like this. And worse, now her bluff had been called. She didn't dare risk any real harm coming to Ran, and Crawford knew it.

"Think about it," he cautioned her again as he turned to leave the room.

Once the door had closed behind him, Aya flung one of her books at the wall and burst into tears.

/-/-/-/

After almost two straight weeks of travel, Ken was more than ready to arrive at their destination. He was tired, his wounds either ached or itched, depending on how far along in the healing process they were, and he missed Ran so much that it seemed as if a fierce ache had taken up permanent residence in his chest. The worst part was that he didn't even know if this woman they were going to see was alive or able to help them. It was almost unbearable to think that they might have come this far only to waste their time.

Of course, the trip itself hadn't been a complete waste of time. Once they had established which roads to take to reach their destination, they had been gratified to discover that Ran's attackers seemed to have taken the same route. It had taken them several days to discover the first hints of that, but once they began to make inquiries, they found people who had witnessed the men passing only a day or two before them. As they continued south, the trail had gotten fainter and the number of days between them greater, until finally they seemed to have vanished all together, but Youji was fairly confident that they were headed to the right place. Ken could only hope he was right, because being wrong meant not finding Ran, and that was intolerable.

It was just dusk, and they were almost to the place the last person they had talked to had told them they would find Keiko's house. The trail they were on was rough and obviously not often used by horses, and in the dim light they'd had to dismount and lead the animals on foot. Ken thought dismally that this was a great place for an ambush, with them all lined up single file, and then almost wished that there would be an ambush, so that at least he'd know they were on the right track.

However, his dire forebodings proved unfounded, and they reached the small house in the middle of a clearing without incident. There was at least one light on inside, which was an encouraging sign. Youji found a convenient tree branch to tether the horses to, and they approached and knocked on the door.

For a moment, there was stillness. Then within the house they heard the faint, shuffling sounds of someone moving slowly and with great care. A moment later, the door was opened by a woman old enough to have been Ken's grandmother. She brushed wispy white hair out of her face and peered at them curiously.

"Yes? Can I help you gentlemen?" she asked.

"Are you Keiko?" Youji asked.

"I am," she said.

"I believe that you may have been acquainted with a member of the Hanashite family once, is that correct?" Youji asked.

The woman drew back a pace, and her curiosity did an instant transformation into wariness. "Who are you?" she asked.

"We're friends of the late Miss Hanashite's son," Youji explained. "He vanished recently, and we think it may be connected to what happened with his mother when she was younger. We were hoping you might know where he'd gone."

The woman still watched them guardedly. "I never knew Nanako had a son," she said.

"She had a daughter too," Youji said. "She's been missing far longer than her brother has. She vanished about six years ago. That was the last time you wrote to Nanako, wasn't it?" And he held up the letter that had tried to warn Ran's mother of approaching danger, only to lie unopened in a desk for six years.

Keiko took the letter and inspected it. "I sent this to Nanako," she said finally. "I wanted her to know what was happening here."

"She was dead when that letter arrived," Youji informed her regretfully. "Her daughter vanished shortly afterwards."

"And you want to help this girl?" Keiko asked.

"And her brother," Youji said. "He's the one who originally brought us into all of this."

Keiko heaved a sad sigh. "You'd better come inside," she said finally. "What you want to know will probably take some time to tell."

Youji bowed and thanked her profusely, stepping into the house when she moved out of the doorway. Omi and Ken, who had both been standing slightly behind him in the shadows moved to follow him, and Keiko had just shut the door behind them when Ken heard her gasp. Quickly he spun around, wondering if they had been followed or if someone had been lying in wait for him. When he found no immediate sign of danger, he turned in confusion to the woman, wondering what had alarmed her so, only to find her gaze fixed in disbelief on Omi.

"My goodness," she whispered. "It can't be... Mamoru?"

Tbc...

Yes, I am evil like that sometimes.