Disclaimer; I don't own Weiss Kreuz or have enough money to pay for them, so no suing.

Chapter 28

Eyes

I was sitting beside him when it happened. I had decided I didn't like the look of the chair I had been using before because it was too close to the still speaking, even if only softly and slowly, figures huddled around the lamps. I didn't want to lose that feeling of calm, that feeling that, even though he had riled me and nagged at me and threatened to kill me, Schuldich had inspired in my mind.

So I decided to sit beside Ken because he was asleep and so couldn't bug me and also because his chair was turned away from the group and was hidden in darkness and silence. The large black armchair was directly opposite him but I didn't watch him as he slept, opting for looking into the darkness and thinking instead. I know that I seemed to be rather apathetic to the while situation but in reality I was still worried sick about…everything. I just didn't want to share my thoughts at the moment, I'd had enough of that back over behind the ferns where Crawford and Schuldich were now talking just as quietly was the German and I had moments before.

However, when Ken started to move, I guess it caught my eye and I happened to look at him. He was curled up into the chair, his feet on the seat and his knees brought up to his chin, his back slightly arched and his arms laying loosely over his folded legs. Or at least, one of the was. As I watched him I became more and more interested by his movements. Well, considering this was Ken Hidaka the man who could give corpses lessons on sleeping, the fact that he was moving at all was rather peculiar; also the fact that it was only his right arm that was raising up, stretching out like a budding flower towards the sun, fingers unfurling…

"Ken?" I said softly, not expecting a reply.

Nothing. I stood up and walked over to him while his arm continued to move up and out towards nothing but air.

"Ken are you awake?" a useless question but still I had to check; still no response.

Well hell, this was strange. Perhaps he was having a nightmare, that would be the only thing I could think of to make Ken move this much in his sleep. So, I thought I'd wake him up because, considering all the crap that we'd been going through lately, Ken's nightmare's had all the potential to be really rather nasty. So I did what any other normal person would have done, right? I grabbed his hand to shake it and wake him up. Well I mean wouldn't you have done it, considering it was right there and just asking to be grabbed anyway and…

…yet I never knew that it would happen, I mean if I had known I don't think I would take it back now but still…at the time I couldn't believe my eyes. Well, you wouldn't have either, believe me. I knew there was something wrong as soon as I felt something akin to static electricity weave between our palms but, by then, it was too late and I'd already grasped his hand. I felt like someone had just stuck my soaking wet hand into the mains circuit. I went rigid, my vision went white, the room disappeared and then…

"Oh…oh god!"

"Don't cut them like that Aya, they'll all die!"

-Oh no…no not this again.-

"Look, you have to cut the stems at an angle…"

-Please not this…it's too much…-

It was all I could think as I "felt" the sunlight of a lazy Wednesday afternoon haze across my face and fall onto the floor to dazzle the tiles there, as the chatter of passers by made my eyes stray away from him momentarily, as the scissors in my hands glinted brightly in the light.

I thought I was over this one, but…-

"…so that the flowers suck up more of the food in the water, or they only last half as long."

As I walked over to him, his red hair swirling delicately as he turned his icy amethyst glare onto me, I felt like just sighing dejectedly and going along with the illusion. I mean they don't call them recurring dreams for nothing. So…that's exactly what I did. I allowed myself to believe even if only for a short time that I really was back at the Koneko, that it really was a Wednesday afternoon that had been so very quiet apart from the birds in the trees and the occasional chatting of passers by. I really let myself think that Aya was standing in front of me in that horrid orange sweater, despite the heat, and really was glaring at me with all his might just because I had dared criticize him. I really did believe that I was back on that day when his behaviour had thrown to the ground and smashed the illusion I had thought was him leave him replaced with an even more mysterious figure.

"Here, see, like this."

I thought that I really did feel him snatch the shiny scissors back from me, I really did sigh as I turned back to sweeping the floor…that I really did jump out of my skin when I felt his hands catch hold of my shoulders and spin me round on my feet.

"AH!" was the most articulate thing I could say then, even though I had never said anything like it on that day.

But that didn't really matter anymore, because Aya had never turned me round on my feet to face that coldly desperate look in his eyes that hadn't ever been there that day either. I just looked into his penetrating gaze with an astonished look of my own, my senses reeling a little as I felt the dream I was sure this was reel with me.

"Why have you been ignoring me!" was the first thing he shouted.

"Huh?" it was the most justified comment that had ever passed my lips, or so it seemed in that bizarre moment.

As I looked into his eyes, those eyes that were now so close to my own as they leaned in towards me to scrutinize as much as they could of my face, I realised that there was something not quite right about his stare. He was looking at me like he had known me for years, whereas on that day he had always looked at me as if he didn't know me at all. I shuddered as he loosened his grip and backed away a little, not, however, letting me go.

"Answer my question," he said stubbornly, although not as emotionally as before…if you could ever call Aya truly emotional and not just angry.

"I…don't know what you're talking about," I shook my head slowly as I spoke, watching his eyes intently.

"I was calling on you, didn't you hear me?" the anger was back and it seemed to me, as his eyes cast some spell, that he was entirely justified to feel this way towards me.

"What, just now?" I asked confused, "I didn't hear you…"

"No not just now you bakayaro! All the time, all the time I'm stuck in this bloody dark and you kept yelling "orchid" at me!"

"When I was what..?" this had to be the weirdest dream I had had in a while, and that was saying something considering how my dreams usually ran.

"You kept yelling at me, and I couldn't get anywhere even though I was walking and then that mirror…" he stopped so suddenly that I wasn't sure if he'd even been talking in the first place, his eyes rapidly darting away from my face in suspicious panic.

He turned around suddenly, sending me stumbling as he forgot to let go of my shoulders and carried me round too. I grabbed onto the bench to stop from falling and cut my finger on the scissors lying haphazardly where he had dropped them, the pain feeling so real for a moment that I actually cried out. What…what was this?

"Where am I?" he whispered more to himself, his stare still wild and confused, "Is this where I was trying to get to? Is this…is this the Koneko?"

"Aya, you're being weird," I told him firmly as I stuck my bleeding finger in my mouth, "will you please just have that stupid conversation with me about teamwork so we can round this up and I can go find an even more bizarre dream to have?"

"I'm being weird?" Aya seemed positively furious, pointing his finger at me to emphasise his point, "I just walked all the way here to find you and you tell me that I'm being weird? Well Hidaka, unless you tell me what's going on right this minute I'm going to do nothing of the sort and…"

Again he stopped as suddenly as he'd begun, looking down at the finger he was pointing at me in astonishment.

"I'm bleeding..?" he said distractedly, sticking his finger into his mouth instinctively.

"Oou to?" I said still with my finger in my mouth, a frown creasing my forehead.

"Mm hmm," he said back with a curt nod, speaking around the digit in his mouth as he replied as curtly as he could, "wat do oou fink I just shaid?"

"Stwange," I murmured, pulling the finger from my mouth to look at it, Aya mirroring my movement.

There was silence then, one which I was glad for just because Aya wasn't shouting at me anymore; it was beginning to make me feel a little sick, that feeling you can have in dreams like you're falling from a great height and your stomach's doing summersaults. I mean, it was bad enough that I had to dream of him now he was gone, but to have that dream ruined by my own destructive sub conscious..? I don't think I could stand having my only contact with him be like this, I needed to have those old days back just the way they were or I think I would just go crazy right here and now, save myself the trouble of doing so slowly and torturously.

He let his hand fall dejectedly to his side, even while I kept my eyes on my own and watched the cut well once more with blood. He shifted a little uneasily, as if he wasn't sure what the ground was, what his feet were supposed to do on contact with it. He ended up walking himself right back into the buckets of flowers before I could stop him, the sparkling water spilling onto the floor and slopping back and forth on the disturbed stand. His look was disorientated and slightly haunted, although I only saw it from the corner of my eye; the blood on my finger was fascinating me far too much…I heard him slump down onto the floor and let out a stiff sigh. I just brought my arm down slowly, ignoring the drip of blood that fell from my finger to the tiled floor with a tiny dull thump. For once in my dream, in this dream, I had no idea what was going to happen.

"The mirror," he asked suddenly, his eyes and voice calm as he stared at me from his hunkered position near the flower buckets, "where is it?"

"What mirror?" I asked a little exasperatedly as I squeezed my finger to stop the imaginary blood from coming out.

"The mirror," he said back just as exasperatedly, "the mirror where I saw her."
"Her…who?" I said with a confused and slightly shocked frown, "…but…Aya I don't understand what you're getting at…"

"What do you mean you don't know what I'm getting at?" he snapped, standing suddenly and walking towards me with menace in his eyes that made me want to back away, "You were there you fool, you were right there, I saw you! Didn't you see her too, she was behind him…"

"You're making no sense," I cringed as he continued to advance, "this is all wrong…"

"I'm making perfect sense of all of this, considering it's all nonsense anyway!" his visage was furious, I couldn't stand it, "Stop lying to me and tell me, tell me now just what the hell is going on."

"Stop it," I could feel the entire room shiver with me as I began to shake, "please…"

"Tell me!"

"I don't know what you mean! Please stop this…" the feeling in my stomach doubled as he came closer

"Where is she!"

"Please…stop doing this to me!"

I felt myself fall to the floor as if it were actually happening, as if in the real world I was probably falling off of that chair I had fallen asleep in. I heard a gasp, saw the spot of blood on the floor as I raced down to meet it, felt the rays of sun hitting my eyes as they reflected from the spilt water. All so real, all so intangible. God I wished it were real, so much; I wished it were as simple as to purely wish for it and it could be true. But then, that's what I thought dreams were for, a place where your own personal fantasies come into fruition. Now I couldn't even find solace in this most simple of pleasures. I couldn't even rely on my own mind to create a perfect world for me. Even dreaming of the past was now more a chore than thinking about the present.

I heard footsteps approaching me.

I looked up, the figure of Aya looming over me, the sunshine behind him from the windows silhouetting his face. I felt astray tear leak invisibly from my right eye and spill onto the tiled floor. His hand reached down, the sun glancing off of the light hair on his arm. The dream was dissipating around my very eyes, I could feel it, just the same as the way I could feel my own arm come up to reach for his own. I wished I could see his face now, I wished it because I wanted naively to know whether or not he was still angry. Not that it mattered in the end because this was a dream and Aya was merely a figment of my imagination or my memory, or both mixed together.

I felt his fingertips brushing over my own, a strange feeling of static electricity surging over my palm, almost forcing them apart as they strove to come together. Then he grasped my hand…

…and the world blazed sudden white. I thought I could feel the pain of it in my eyes even though I new it wasn't real, that none of this was real and these feelings weren't real and Aya wasn't real and neither was his hand even if it felt it.

A bright light shone in the distance, there was an echo of laughter…children laughing. I could feel that pollen scented breeze on my face, like the gentians floating through the air and the smoke of the fire licking at the walls and the smell of charred flesh drifting through the smoke filled atmosphere…when he spoke he spoke from behind me and all around me and inside of me and all he said was…

"That was when you had to wake up."

"Aya?" I screamed in fright and confusion as he suddenly hurtled away from me, the whole room went black and…

I felt the need to be sick as I seemed to lurch right out of my own skin, my mind a paragon of agony as I tried to clutch my head but couldn't. I wanted to pull back my hand, still outstretched after clasping Aya's own, still wrapped around a hand that was now invisible to me, but I couldn't move it. I realised I had closed my eyes without even noticing, opening them suddenly from a need to see if he was there again and staggering to the left at the brilliant light there, even though I was still lying down. Yet this was a dream, anything could happen; which was why I wasn't surprised at all when I opened my eyes and saw that my outstretched arm was sporting an orange sleeve and dusky red hairs from pale skin. Or that Yoji was unwittingly holding onto it, his eyes wide and incredulous.

When I finally did black out back into the oblivion of dreamless sleep or wherever the hell you go after such a hideous consortium of madness, I was rather more than glad.

AN: Well there ya go, finally someone gets it! Gees, took them long enough ne? But well, have they even gotten it yet? sigh who knows how these guys ever managed…grumble grumble. Please R&R these idiots!