Roses in Rain
a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

Part 1 – Lost Angel

Thursday evening and Ken skipped soccer practice in favor of killing someone.

Funny thing was it didn't seem like a good enough excuse to him and it hadn't ever. It felt like it was up there with convenient sprains or the inopportune colds he had, as a child, fantasized about catching whenever practice coincided with a cold snap or light yet drenching rain, though he'd turned up all the same and complained about the guys who didn't. What else was he supposed to tell the neighborhood kids, though? Better they thought he'd twisted his ankle than someone had shot him in the leg, though Ken understood kids well enough to know they'd be far more interested in bullet wounds than strains and sprains.

Not that anyone had shot at him tonight; the mission had proved so simple it seemed anticlimactic. Couldn't they, where they was someone else, have arrested the guy instead?

"Shit," Youji said, and it was hard for Ken to tell if he was joking or not, "for this I missed my date."
"Shut up, Kudou." Ken replied, quickly and instinctively. "We all know you've seen more action this month than I will in my entire goddamned lifetime, you don't need to rub it in."
Youji smiled at him. Broad, languid, irritating; he had a smile that invited Ken to hit it, and hit it hard. "Why, Kenken. I idn't know you cared."
"I never said I did! I can't believe your fucking ego."

(But maybe, Ken thought, I shouldn't have blushed. Certainly shouldn't have answered so fast. Well, shit.)

There was something vaguely dispiriting about missions that went largely to plan. Something awkward about meeting up again afterward, and the awkward conversation that always followed. It was over and they were alive – right, now what? It had always seemed kind of weird that all there was for it once the guards had been persuaded to see things Weiss' way, the target was down and the site was (as ever, all too often regardless of whether it had been part of the objectives or not) merrily blazing, to turn round and go back home and next thing anyone knew it would be morning and time to open up the store again and go back to pretending to be florists…

"Hey, Youji? Do you reckon I'm a florist pretending to be an assassin or an assassin pretending to be a florist?"
"As the ancient Chinese would say, Kenken… don't try to be profound, it doesn't suit you."

They met up with Omi by the perimeter fence, half-hidden from the cancelled guards in a patch of convenient shadow beneath a convenient overhang that shielded him from the light rain. Alert Omi, tidy and trim as if he hadn't even left the shop (shouldn't, Ken thought, he have had some blood on him somewhere?). Looked, his teammates noted, like he'd had a boring one as well. Hell, Ken suspected even Aya had been bored and Aya had been the one taking down the target. No, they really hadn't needed assassins for that one. He wondered what the Hell Persia thought he was playing at.

"Hey, where is Aya?" He asked suspiciously.
Omi blinked. "Aya-kun? Oh… he had to go further than he thought to find the target. He says he'll make his own way home."
Youji smiled wryly, as if he hadn't been at all surprised and probably he hadn't been. "Well, that's Aya for you," he said equably, giving Ken a supposedly playful cuff that nearly knocked him off his feet. "Come on, Kenken. Let's get out of here before this smoke makes my hair smell bad. Besides, I need my beauty sleep if I'm not going to disappoint the girls tomorrow by showing up looking anything less than my best!"
Ken looked askance at him; if anything, Youji's grin only broadened at the look on Ken's face. "Why do I think your ego should be visible from space?"
"Why is the building burning anyway?" Omi asked suspiciously, as if the thought the answer to that imponderable might not have found its origin with one of his teammates hadn't even occurred to him. "That wasn't one of the objectives."
"Ah." Ken grinned suddenly and nervously; both his teammates turned to regard him, Omi in frank distrust, Youji suppressing laughter behind an unconvincing attempt at severity. "Well," Ken volunteered anxiously, "there was this guard… um, well, there was several of them actually, Omi, and I was kind of trapped and I had to think of something to distract them and… uh… it seemed like a good idea at the time?"
"Ken-kun!"

The thought that he might have to worry about his teammates didn't even cross Aya's mind as he made his own discreet way from the now-blazing complex, slipping discreet as a ghost through the empty courtyards and gracefully climbing up and jumping over the perimeter fence. They could, as he was well aware, take care of themselves and he had other far more pressing things to think about.

Though he hadn't as yet confided in any of his teammates about the matter (some things one didn't mention over the comm.) the mission hadn't quite gone off as smoothly as the others assumed. No doubt about it, it had been successful – but as far as Weiss were concerned, they needn't have bothered turning up.

Someone had beaten him to the target.

No doubt about that for a moment. Abyssinian – no, Weiss, he reminded himself – beaten to a target! It left Aya feeling somehow cheated. He had slipped into the darkened room the target was hiding in, moving quiet as drifting shadow, and found – nothing. Just a slowly cooling corpse sprawled across the desk in a slowly gathering pool of its own irrelevant blood, and a wound which didn't, even in the eyes of a man accustomed to death, look serious enough to have proved fatal. And more bloodstains on the carpet, and on the windowsill; not, Aya knew, the target's blood. Whoever had done it hadn't got away unmarked either.

They needn't have bothered coming at all. It left Aya irritated, and obscurely worried. Perhaps, he thought, Schwarz had been after their target as well; maybe the target had betrayed his masters. Perhaps – a more alarming thought – Weiss had been compromised. At the very least someone was hiding something from him, all of them: Weiss, as ever, being an afterthought. Maybe Omi could shed some light on the matter. Maybe Youji or Ken had seen something (though that, he admitted, was hardly likely). When he got back, he'd have to —

Which was when he saw the rivulet of blood, hideously dark against the pale paving stones, coursing slowly across the rain-washed sidewalk.

Which was when he saw her.

The girl was huddled against the wall, her long black hair soaking wet and tumbled across her bruised, pallid cheeks; her long dark lashes swept down half-hiding wide, pain-filled orbs. Her arms were pressed against her chest, hiding her wound, but the bloody marks spattered across what had once been a form-fitting light purple tee with a black kitten design betrayed what must have happened. There was more blood on her loose black mini-skirt and her knee high black high heeled boots were spattered with mud as if she had been running. Even though she was soaked through and spattered with her own crimson blood, and her delicate features were marred with bruises and tight with pain, she still looked extraordinarily pretty.

He had been turning from her before her presence really registered with him and had him pausing, turning reluctantly to look at her over his shoulder, then turning back to her. It would have been easier to turn and walk away had the figure in the alleyway been a man, but she wasn't. Frowning, Aya took a pace toward her and at the sound of his footsteps that agonized gaze swiveled toward him and stared at him in fright.

"P… please…" the girl stammered softly, her lashes fluttering as she stared up at him and her words almost lost to the rain, "don't hurt me…"

Aya said nothing, frowning deeply as he gazed upon her, but his stony gaze softened as he regarded her closer. The girl was far younger than he had assumed at first glance – she would, he was sure, be no more than eighteen years old… about the same age, he realized with a sudden shock, as his own sister. Oh and Ken, of course, but Ken hardly counted with Aya at any time and certainly not in comparison with such a girl as this… what could a creature like Ken ever have in common with someone like this girl?

"Help me," She pleaded. Her voice was low, melodious, beseeching.
It was on the tip of his tongue to say her problems were none of his concern but, for some reason, Aya found he couldn't seem to speak. He simply stood. He caught himself thinking (and the thought felt strange, not at all like one of his own thoughts), who could possibly have wanted to commit such a brutal act on a beautiful young girl? All he managed was a flat, discouraging but rather lame, "I have to go." And he tried to turn away, but he couldn't. Something in him insisted he stand his ground. There was something about this girl…
"Please—" The girl's entreaty was cut short as her frail body was wracked with a fit of coughing and bright crimson blood welled gently up at the corner of her full lips. "Please, it hurts… so much… I…I'm so scared…" Her voice tailed off and her eyelids fluttered gently closed as she slumped against the harsh brickwork of the wall, her battered form going limp, leaving Aya stood gazing at her in shock. She must, he realized, have lost consciousness.

Even if he was outwardly a little cold Aya couldn't have left this girl to bleed to death in an alleyway. Due to the late hour, the streets around them were utterly deserted – he couldn't trust someone else to and should he leave the girl now Aya had no doubt that she wouldn't survive the night. Rather to his own surprise (it didn't feel like something he should have done, or ever have wanted to do) Aya shrugged off his heavy buckled trench coat and bent down to enfold the girl's lithe body in it, wrapping it tightly around her battered form and lifting her into his arms. Wait, what? What in the Hell was all this about?

… but the girl barely weighed a thing.

Hurrying back to his Porsche and gently placing the girl down on the back seats, Aya caught himself rearranging the folds of his coat over her and drew back, startled. What was he doing? Why was he taking a… what in the world was he doing? Mentally, he shook himself, blinking and taking stock (you're not yourself, Fujimiya). What was going on? He was alone in a side street with a bleeding stranger in his Porsche, someone he'd never met before, someone who could have been anybody: his next target, a plant, a danger in an attractive package. It didn't matter that this was a girl, a young and beautiful one at that, and—

He glanced back into the car. Back down at the figure on the back seat; his eyes, previously narrowed in thought, grew grave, even troubled. The girl.

… no, she couldn't ever have been an enemy. A girl like this, so innocent, so afraid, couldn't possibly be a target in the making. There was something about her, something that told Aya she was, somehow, different. She was an innocent, she had been hurt, probably by the same people Weiss had been sent to kill… and wasn't it their duty to protect the blameless from the dark beasts who threatened their happiness? It was, almost, a duty to protect this girl…

An inexplicable action, explained away all too easily.

So this was what insanity looked like.

Ken had long suspected he and his teammates were penciled in for a good shot at lunacy and had occasionally found himself wondering how in the Hell he'd go about recognizing craziness when it did show up. Now, though, he thought he knew and knew exactly.

Insanity looked like a soaking wet Aya – Aya Fujimiya, for Christ's sakes! – showing up in the basement holding a total stranger in his arms, a total stranger who was wearing his freaking trench coat, and demanding the three of them (all staring at him, the perfect picture of total bewilderment; what do you think you're doing, Aya?) fetch a first-aid kit and blankets and towels and clean clothing and, in all likelihood, a three-course meal. Insanity was a guy who knew the value of secrecy only too well, knew it in his blood, deciding to render any notion Weiss might have entertained of cover completely moot. That was insanity. That was batshit crazy in its purest form.

"I think we've lost Aya." Ken said flatly into the silence that followed.

And realized he was talking to himself.

Youji and Omi were staring at him. Not at Aya, at him. As if he were the one being terminally strange. As if it had been him, not Aya, who'd brought home a bleeding stranger and informed them that their Extra Credit assignment was to nurse them back to health. For a moment Ken could think of no response to their bewildering expressions – Youji's skeptical, Omi's frankly consternated – than to blink at them. Not, he admitted, the most intelligent of responses, but did he really need to be intelligent when Aya (and what the Hell, might as well include Youji and Omi too) was being so painfully dumb?

"Uh, guys," he said awkwardly, "there is a reason we don't drag total strangers home with us, you know…"
"Is this really the time for that, Ken-kun?" Omi asked incredulously. "Can't you see she's hurt?"
"Oh, it's a girl?" Ken said. Surprised. Maybe, he thought, that went some way to explaining why Aya had dragged her back. Maybe it had been some misguided notion of chivalry, but… nah, chivalry didn't seem like Aya. Aya wouldn't have done something like that. Rescuing some unknown girl just because she was there was the kind of stupid stunt Youji might have pulled, but even Youji would have had the sense to leave this one to the professionals rather than deciding to play Private Nurse himself. Youji wouldn't have done it. Aya definitely wouldn't have done it. So why in the Hell had he?

Not that anyone else seemed to have noticed the incongruity. Not when Omi seemed hell-bent on turning the basement into a makeshift emergency room and Youji was hovering by Aya's side and gazing down, like a concerned parent, at the face of the fragile girl in his teammate's arms. Was it just Ken's imagination or had the way Aya was holding her to his chest gotten just a shade possessive? What was going on here? Ken knew what was going on here, but what was going on here?

"Wait." Ken said. "Wait. Guys? Omi? Hey, Omi! Omi, what the Hell's wrong with you?"

Turning back to Ken, Omi hesitated at the foot of the stairs, the picture of concern. "Oh, Ken-kun," he said breathlessly, "I'm going to borrow some clothes from your closet for her, I don't know if mine'll— is something the matter?" He blinked, as if he had only now remembered that Ken was actually present, as if he hadn't actually acknowledged before now that Ken was shouting at him and that perhaps – the realization cutting through his sudden anxiety for the strange girl in Aya's arms; now where had that come from? – there was something preying on his friend's mind.

Finally. He'd been wondering if he'd stopped existing or something. Ken tried, not entirely successfully, to keep himself from scowling. Okay, he thought, they've all gone mad. He could tell he was going to have to keep this simple.

"Of course there's something the fucking matter! She can't stay here!"

And Omi actually gasped, his expression growing shocked. Even horrified. A bit of an overreaction, Ken thought, though he looked away almost in spite of himself. Met Aya's eyes more by accident than anything and only just managed not to cringe as the Patented Aya Fujimiya Thousand-Megawatt Leveling Gaze of Icy Death hit him head-on. Mary Mother of God, if looks could kill Persia would have been looking out for a new Siberian. Of course Youji was no help at all. Ken hardly knew why he'd expected he would be. Youji was never any bloody help, why would he have suddenly started now?

"But, Ken-kun, she needs treatment!" Omi cried, his eyes wide, as if he couldn't believe Ken could be so heartless.
"What can we do a doctor can't?" Ken protested. "There is such a thing—"
"Leave it, Ken!" Youji, all his attention on the girl, his face full of anger and fear and solicitous concern. He hadn't even bothered looking round for more than a moment…
"There is such a thing as a hospital!"

Omi ignored him, exchanging a weary glance with Aya and Youji, huddled attentively around the couch Aya had placed the wounded girl down upon, as if he couldn't believe Ken could prove so bloody-minded. Omi had always known Ken was stubborn but this was ridiculous. There was a time and a place for that kind of thing and this, he thought, was definitely not it. On the couch the girl moaned softly, and Omi spared Ken a withering glance (which Ken, of course. utterly failed to notice) before hurrying over to the couch, to join Aya and Youji in gazing down on the wounded girl, her face pale and tight with pain.

"We're assassins," Ken shouted at their turned backs, "not a fucking Crash team!"

And got the feeling he might as well have been shouting at the wall.

She stirred.

A single gentle sigh and she stirred, shifting uncomfortably as if trying to find a more comfortable way to lie. One little hand moved slightly beneath the sheets; her delicate features, previously relaxed in sleep, tightened as her brow furrowed and her full lips , her long, dark lashes fluttering slightly as she struggled to open her eyes. Omi caught his breath and exchanged a significant glance with Youji. Aya didn't move, didn't lift his eyes from her face.

Somewhere in the hinterland of their collective consciousness Ken sighed irritably, breaking the spell. Turning to shoot his friend an aggravated look from beneath his curls, Youji caught Ken just in time to see him quickly turning away, folding his arms and doing his utmost to look stubbornly unconcerned. Everything about him – his posture, the set of his jaw, the look in his eyes – betrayed a certain I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this resentment. Well, why not? It was only a statement of fact. Even, he thought, of the blindingly bleeding obvious.

"Just what is your problem, Ken?" Youji asked irritably. "We look after each other, don't we?"
"Yeah, because we haven't got a fucking choice!" Ken retorted. His attempt to try and remain coolly indifferent to the girl – an attempt which he had to admit, even if only to himself, wasn't coming at all easily – had reached the point that he appeared to prefer talking to a standard lamp rather than turn round to face Youji and, with him, the house guest he didn't want to acknowledge. Honestly, Youji thought, he can be such a kid sometimes it's scary. "I'm dead, she isn't! There's no reason she couldn't have gone to a hospital—"
"Quiet." Aya said, firmly and menacingly soft, in tone that brooked no compromise. He hadn't looked round. Still he watched the girl, rapt and anxious as a father over the cot of his ailing infant. If it hadn't been so utterly freaky it might almost have been humorous…
"Jesus," Ken muttered under his breath.

(Not that He was listening either.)

The others ignored him and went back to gazing at the girl like a group of hypnotized owls. Ken determined to ignore them. He managed it for all of fifteen seconds until curiosity got the better of him and he hurried back over to the bed, peering over Youji's shoulder at the girl as she lay disgustingly picturesquely on the bed, her jet-black hair fanned out across the white sheets she lay on. She looked like a modern-day take on Sleeping Beauty, all shell-pink lips and porcelain complexion and charmingly tangled dark locks. Christ, Ken thought resentfully, she's so bloody annoyingly perfect. Nobody slept like that, except in pictures.

(She couldn't be real, could she? Real people mussed up the sheets when they slept, and drooled on the pillows, and their mouths hung open and they only looked disgustingly cute if they were under eight or you thought they were disgustingly cute already. Real people snored.)

She seemed, almost, to wait. She seemed to choose her moment, waiting until she gauged she had their undivided attention. Then, only then, did she allow her lashes to flutter again, flutter and part, revealing sleepy, pain-filled violet eyes, impossibly wide in such a slender, pale face as they slowly focused on the faces crowding round her. She blinked, her soft pink lips parting slightly as she gasped softly, understatedly. Omi realized he had been holding his breath and quickly let himself breathe again before anyone else noticed only to realize, when he heard Youji's sudden sigh, that he hadn't been the only one. Even Aya looked tense. Ken, admittedly, had pulled a face and muttered something exasperated under his breath, but even he suspected he hardly counted at the moment.

"W… who are you?" She quavered, her voice a low, husky whisper. "Where… am I?"

Holy Mary Mother of God, Ken thought, she said it? "She actually said—"

Aya quickly shot Ken a pointed glance which said plainly as shouting, if you say another word, Ken Hidaka, the rest of your life will be both exceedingly short and excruciatingly painful, before turning right back to the girl, his face all solicitous concern, though he frowned slightly when he realized the girl's eyes had alighted on Omi. Ken decided he was going to look out of the window instead. If what Aya really wanted was to go irretrievably nuts then who was Ken to try and stop him?

"Um…" Omi stammered, unnerved by the way the girl was watching him, and the fear he saw in her wide purple orbs, "Well, you're above a flower shop, actually. You were injured, so Aya-kun brought you back…" He hesitated as a shadowed look flitted into her eyes, and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "You don't have to be afraid, you're safe here. Do you remember what happened to you?"
The girl looked up at him, her eyes confused. "I… no. No, not really." She said softly. "I—" She broke off, coughing. She even made coughing look beautifully poetic. You, Ken thought as he watched Aya gently helping her into a sitting position, supporting her body against his chest whilst Youji, not to be outdone, pushed her dark, tangled locks back from her forehead and held a glass of water to her lips, are definitely not real. He kept half expecting to see an On switch on her nape.
"Are you all right?" Aya asked solicitously, attempting, not entirely successfully, to wave Youji away; the blonde still hovered, the half-empty glass of water clasped tightly in his hands and his gaze fixed upon the girl as Aya took his time about settling her back into bed. Maybe she was still thirsty.
She swallowed, moistening her lips with the tip of her little pink tongue, then nodded. "I'm sorry," she murmured.
"Don't worry!" Omi said overemphatically. "Please, don't worry! It's quite all—"
"Who are you?" Ken asked suddenly.

The girl started, turning to In truth, she had barely noticed him before. Now she studied him from behind a fall of raven-dark hair. For a moment Ken fancied her gaze assessing, her expression calculating – and she smiled. She had a dizzying smile, the kind of smile a guy could get drunk on and Ken wondered if he hadn't been being kind of rash in taking against this girl after all. She was just so, so… he couldn't put it into words but she made Yuriko look like nothing…

"Rain." She said quietly. "They call me Rain."
"Rain?" Ken echoed. An American name? She didn't look American. What the Hell kind of name is that, he wanted to say. "That's a nickname, right?" Why didn't I say What the Hell kind of name is that, he wondered, only to wince at the look that crossed her face; that sudden strange shadowing crept back into her eyes. The smile dimmed, she quickly dropped her gaze and Ken stared, his own expression growing troubled. He should have known better than to ask her a thing like that… hang on, why should he? "Okay, okay, sorry!" He said awkwardly. "So Rain, then… uh, I'm Ken by the way…"
"Ken." She said as if trying the name out. "Okay then, Ken." And she smiled at him again and he caught himself thinking, wow, I need to apologize to the others.

… sure, something inside him pointed out, in an obstinately reasonable tone, but you liked Yuriko. She'd been solid and there and her hair got tangled when she had it up in her helmet and she didn't mind, and she'd got mad over stupid things and she'd weighed more than she looked and her body wasn't built on any model, it was just her body. She'd been a real girl, not some stupid bloody wind-up combination of a china doll and a genre painting. She'd just been Yuriko and that was what he'd liked about her…

And I, he thought, and did it firmly, do not like this girl.

He watched distractedly as Youji, obviously deciding names were the key, quickly introduced himself and Omi and Aya to Rain in dizzying succession, fortunately stopping just short of telling her their shoe sizes and that they were all assassins. He watched as the girl aimed that heady smile at Youji, that smile that lit up her already beautiful face, and felt a pang of something rather like anger, and wondered why. Jealousy? What in the Hell—? He didn't even know the woman. Wasn't Rain supposed to be sick or something? Why in the world was she reclining against her pillows, with Aya perched on the bed by her side, and smiling like she didn't have a care in the world? Yeah, she was beautiful when she was smiling, but… good Christ, why did it matter what she looked like when she smiled? She shouldn't be here and that was the end of it!

He didn't know if it was intuition or one hundred percent natural craziness but Ken couldn't help thinking, there's something not quite right about this. There was something not quite right about Rain. Just being around her made him feel a little bit weird. A little bit crazy. A little bit totally unlike Ken.

If Rain wasn't about to get out, and it didn't look like she was, Ken guessed the next best thing was for him to.