Chapter 50
Hard Decisions
Even though we avoided the oncoming cars, didn't mean that we ended the right way up. The tires screamed against the still rain slick ground, the van rocking violently to the right, then tipping in that stomach churning way as it veered to the other side, the wheels leaving the road and everything going amazingly still until we hit the ground. The sound made my ears ring, or maybe it was the impact. My already battered body didn't take well to the impact at all; I felt something snapping, but couldn't tell what, and tasted blood in my mouth. I heard someone yelling, someone screaming in pain, and the van skidded for another few feet before coming to rest. Everything became deadly still, ringing, smoky, then I saw lights, I heard feet, my head was swimming, swimming, I felt nauseous.
"Shit," I croaked out, managing to feel for my seatbelt and undo it, "Yamagata?"
I fell out of my chair as I released the seatbelt, dropping the short distance to the side of the van. I turned and found myself face to face with Ran, his eyes dazed as he looked at me and shook his head.
"Fuck me," he said back faintly, "you really are bad luck Yoshitsuna."
"Huh," I coughed out, smiling despite myself, "nice time to bring that back up."
Old joke, which he'd always used to excuse himself from any mistakes he'd made by saying it was because he'd had me with him at the time. Fucking nostalgia, I thought as he smiled at me faintly.
"Hey! Hey is everyone alright in there?" voices shouted from outside.
"Schuldich? Farfarello?" Crawford was yelling from the front seat.
"We're alright," Farfarello said back calmly; he had disengaged from his seat and was helping a very ill looking Schuldich from his seat.
"Yoshitsuna!" I looked up to find Yamagata looking at me with worried eyes as he pulled himself over the wreckage, "Help me with Kudo!"
That was when the passenger door at the side of the van, which was now facing skywards, was jerked harshly open. It took a few goes, but then an all too familiar face was staring down at us in utter disbelief.
"It's you," Omi breathed, blinking his eyes and staring for a few more moments before his head disappeared and he was shouting to someone, "Over here! We need help, now!"
"Omi," I heard Kudo whisper out.
That was when I noticed that it was hard to stay awake. That was when I placed my hand against my shirt and wondered why it was wet. I frowned, noticing Ran's eyes widen as he looked down at my chest. I followed his gaze and saw the red against my fingers, against the white of my shirt, saw the jagged piece of metal.
"Oh," I said stupidly, before passing out.
"Shit, no!" I grabbed hold of Yoshitsuna as he slumped forwards into a faint, "Wake up, hey!"
I'm not going to get you back just to lose you! I thought savagely. I looked up to find Yamagata glaring at me as he helped the men who had appeared at the open door with unloading those who couldn't extract themselves from the wreckage. I quickly unclipped my belt and hoisted Yoshitsuna up towards the exit, into the arms of a waiting man in black body armour. Who the hell was I handing him to? Fuck knows, but if Weiss were calling them friends than I guess I had no choice but to trust them too.
Of course it ended up just me and Yamagata in the truck, struggling to extricate ourselves. Yamagata pushed me out of the way harshly, glaring at me as I stumbled.
"Just wait," he said, voice full of emotion, "just wait and you'll get what's coming to you, murderer."
Huh, like he was one to talk, I thought as I watched him hoist himself up and out of the van. Like he knew anything about me, anything at all. I looked towards the floor of the van which had now become a mess of wrecked metal and glass. Nothing I couldn't handle however. Another man appeared at the open door and reached down with his hand.
"Give me your hand," he said, his voice muffled by his helmet, "I'll pull you up."
"I'll be fine," I said darkly as I quickly ripped away the metal obstructing my way as if it were mere dry twigs.
I could sense his surprise. Perhaps even more so as I straightened out my hand, muttered a few seals under my breath and then punctured the floor of the van as if it were nothing but tissue paper, taking hold of it and tearing it away to reveal the storage compartment underneath.
"But perhaps you could take this for me," I said, handing him the body which I had stashed in the compartment and noting his complete confusion, "and yes he's dead, but don't let that fool you."
When I woke up, seeing a white, clean, sterile room wasn't exactly what I'd planned on seeing. In fact I hadn't planned on seeing anything at all. In all honesty, since I bound myself to this body and declared this a sort of foolishly heroic last battle, I'd been much more fearful of death than I had when still under the weight of the curse of reincarnation. I could die now, and so could Yamagata. So when I'd seen the blood, when the pain had finally registered though the haze of shock and everything had gone black, I thought that it was quite literally that. Death.
Not quite, it seemed. I looked to my right and found a door on the far wall with a glass panel inlaid inside. I was pretty sure it wasn't a good idea to get up and start walking around but, considering I was pretty vulnerable at the moment and had no idea where I was, well, I was all for finding out if I was in a safe place and then trying to find out where everyone else was.
"You shouldn't be up!" was the first thing I heard as soon as I stepped out of the room.
Thankfully I had killed two birds with one stone as it was Yamagata who had said it, bouncing up from a seat in the small corridor which the door led to. He stared at me in concern, practically herding me back into the room and forcing me to lay down on the bed. He then reinserted the drip which I had slid out of my arm and looked at me sternly. I stared back, not entirely sure if the accusation in his eyes was all to do with getting out of bed before I was well. I swallowed and avoided his stare.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"You're avoiding my questions and I haven't even asked them yet," came his dry reply, "that's impressive."
"Just answer my question," I said back tightly, looking back at him.
"Fine," he said, sitting on the bed and crossing his arms, "apparently the people we almost crashed into used to be the people who Weiss once worked for. They're friends as far as I can tell. They've fixed us up as best they can but it looks like they have problems of their own and probably want shot of us as soon as they can. Either that or they'll want to use us to their advantage."
"Great," I groaned out, closing my eyes; why did everything always change so quickly around here? "well, at least I'm not dead I guess."
"Yeah," Yamagata actually sounded relieved about that too at least, though his countenance was still foreboding when I opened my eyes.
I was encouraged enough by the slight lack of gravity in his tone to ask what I did next. That plus the fact that I never did posses tact, in any one of my reincarnations.
"Where's Ran?" it was meant to be innocent, but Yamagata's eyes sharpened at the mere mention of his name.
"Around," he said vaguely, "I think that he's upstairs with Omi and Ken and some woman called Manx."
"I think I can guess what that conversation is about," I said tersely, "trying to get Abyssinian back into his body?"
"Bingo," he said darkly, "and if I were you I wouldn't interfere."
"Of course," I said back acidly, "why would I?"
"Which is exactly what I was going to ask you," he said back cryptically, causing me to stall and lose track of what exactly we were talking about, "why would you? Hmm? Why would you?"
Oh, I thought, Oh.
"That's nothing to do with you," I said back tonelessly, "and I don't think this is the time or place to be talking about it, if we ever do."
"You slept with him?" he asked, all emotion gone from his voice.
"That's nothing to do with you," I said back tightly, avoiding his stare.
"And here I always thought that your attachment to him was odd," he mused, his tone insultingly dismissive as he stood from the bed and headed towards the door, "Oh and just so you know, I wouldn't get too attached to him being around. It doesn't seem like he wants to stay and he's more than happy to give the body back. Seems he prefers being dead to sticking around any of us longer than he has to."
I couldn't reply. I couldn't talk. He closed the door and I felt it as physical thing against my body, as if he'd hit me, as if he'd choked the breath out of me. I just lay there, staring at the door. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. That was when the tear slid down my cheek and was absorbed into the pillow as if it had never been there at all. The hollowness started in my chest, seeping into my limbs as I tried to make myself move, tried so hard. It wasn't true, none of this, it was all a lie! I was so sick fed up of being lied to! Of being used!
"Liar," I croaked out, finally finding my voice, my face turning into an angry scowl, "Liar!"
I ignored the pain as I pulled the drip from my arm once more and left the room. I had no idea where I was going, the only direction I had was 'upstairs', but in the state I was in, nothing would have stopped me from me from finding him before he left me again.
Before he left, again.
I found the first set of stairs that led up the way and took them. The people in the facility seemed to keep pretty much to themselves, though some did give me odd looks. Other than that I managed to stay clear of anyone who looked like they were armed and other than that I stayed pretty much unquestioned. Downstairs had been all white walls and laminate floors, like a medical facility, but one floor up was much more like an office building, with dark grey carpets, offices with glass walls, some walled off with keypads at the entrances, high tech display units, a lot more guys with guns than there was downstairs and a feeling of being completely out of place. Considering I was wearing a white hospital shirt and trousers it wasn't hard to figure out exactly why I felt out of place though.
So I picked the first room that I could duck into and get my bearings. I mean I knew Yamagata had said they were friends and could be trusted (to a certain degree) but I never trusted someone I'd never met and I'd had enough tricks played on me over the years to deeply ingrain the lesson of never letting your guard down in an unfamiliar place. Add this to the fact that I was mad as hell and also scared shitless at the thought of losing him again and, well, you'll understand how I was feeling. Which was why it was such a relief when, as I sneaked through the small room I had found myself in and exited through a door on the opposite wall, I came face to face with everyone I had been looking for. There was Ran, still there, good, great, thank god. It was perhaps sad that I could tell it was still him just from the way he looked at me, but I was very, very sure it was still him. Then there was Omi, sitting in a chair with his hands in his lap, looking a little sick and shocked. Which is just how Crawford looked as he leaned against the far wall, trying to hide his emotions as he kept his hand on Schuldich's shoulder to stop him from leaving his seat. Farferello stood stoically at Schuldich's other side, his mouth set in a firm line. Kudo was nowhere to be seen, which led me to think that he was in a hospital bed somewhere like I had been. There was also a new face, a tall, curvaceous redheaded woman who was eyeing me suspiciously as she sat behind the only desk in the room.
I began to feel like there was something very wrong going on in this room, something that had happened just before I entered. Just then Yamagata entered from a door on the other side of the room and, when he saw me, was initially shocked. Then he was angry. Well screw that, I thought back viciously.
"What the hell are you doing here?" asked said seriously.
"Don't order me around," I said back spitefully, "what the hell is going on here?"
No-one spoke. I looked to Ran who, in return, only rolled his eyes at the silence and explained.
"I've just told them my plan," he said with the usual aggravatingly superior drawl he'd always used when he thought that no-one understood what he was talking about, "and this is what happened. They all just stared at me."
"It's not a very good plan," Crawford said through gritted teeth, "that's why."
"There is nothing wrong with my plan," Ran said back, narrowing his eyes, "I thought you of all people would be grateful I'd bothered to have enough foresight to save your team members body at all."
Wait, wait, wait, I thought in confusion.
"What the hell are you even talking about?" I asked, taking a seat on a nearby table, watching Schuldich as he stared at the ground in silence; his eye had been cleaned and bandaged along with the rest of his wounds.
"The young boy..." Ran said tonelessly, although I could hear the sadness in his voice.
"Nagi," Schuldich said, not raising his head.
"Right," Ran said, nodding, "Nagi. After I killed him I took his body and hid it."
"Why?" I asked at the same time as Omi asked "Where?"
"Because I can bring him back," Ran said soberly to me, turning to Omi and saying, "in the compartment under the floor of the van we used to escape."
"Did you bring him with us?" I asked breathlessly.
"Of course I did!" Ran said admonishingly, "Only now they won't let me go ahead with my plan!"
What the hell could be stopping them? I thought dumbly. Deep down however, I was simply absurdly happy that Ran hadn't killed that little boy for no reason.
"Why did you?" Schuldich spoke up again, his voice rather distorted, as if he wasn't sure how to use it.
"Why did I what?" asked Ran irritably.
"Kill him in the first place?" Schuldich hissed out, fixing his one good eye on Ran's forbidding countenance.
"So that my loyalty wouldn't be disputed until the final moment," he said, "when I could make my counter-strike. Not that it worked in the end. Believe me, I would never have killed him if I hadn't had a way to undo it."
"Which is..?" I prompted.
"Using the heigou kokugen no jutsu," Ran said easily, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "so I can put everything right."
"Are you fucking nuts?" was the first thing that came out of my mouth.
He simply rolled his eyes again and sighed.
"Great," he said sarcastically, "now you have a problem with it too."
"Of course I do!" I shouted, "no one can control that kind of magic! Hell Uesugi only just managed to do it himself and he's beyond powerful!"
"And I'm not?" he said back, "Did you miss the part where he infused most of his powers with my body? I am more than capable of this."
"And what happens to Ran," Omi asked, "our Ran that is."
"I said I'd put everything right," Ran said tightly, "and I am not fond of repeating myself. Everyone will end up right where they are supposed to be."
Right where they are supposed to be. The words rang hollowly in my ears and I felt sick again. This time I found I couldn't get angry to compensate for the sickening emptiness spreading inside of me. I can't find you again just to lose you, yet that decision didn't seem to be up to me. I hugged my right arm around my waist and looked at the floor, thinking that for once I perhaps knew how Schuldich felt.
"Well," the redhead finally spoke, "as I have no fricking idea what is going on here, I guess I'm going to follow your lead Omi. As you know we'll look after Ken and Yoji for as long as they need but, well, as far as our specialists are saying it doesn't look good for him. His neural response it zilch and his brain activity is becoming weaker and weaker by the minute. He doesn't have long."
"Which is why we need to act now," Ran said decisively.
"You're sure you can do this?" Crawford asked seriously.
"Yes," Ran said back, holding his gaze until Crawford finally nodded and looked away, his emotion unreadable; he hadn't removed his hand from Schuldich's shoulder since I'd entered the room.
Was it bad that it frightened me that everyone in the room seemed to have come to a decision? I panicked, trying to swallow it down and failing.
"What about you?" it came out as nothing but a hoarse whisper, which half of the room didn't seem to understand.
Ran did. Ran understood. That' why he looked at me like that, with those pale violet eyes of his and his sadness and his empathy and...and that's why I couldn't stand to look at him anymore. That's why I got up from the table, no matter how tired I suddenly felt, or how much it was becoming painful to stand as the painkillers that had been put into my system through the drip began to wear off. I left quickly and silently and stumbled my way back to the room I had run out of so angrily only moments before. I didn't make it to the bed, simply collapsing onto the floor instead and curling up into as tight a ball as my injured chest would allow. It was only a few moments before Yamagata rushed in, admonishing me for being so foolish and leaving my bed at all, pretending like nothing had happened because that was his way of coping with all of this hell. I allowed him to help me back into the bed, where he once more reinserted my drip and I once more stared at the door after he had left, feeling empty and sick and lifeless.
Only this time I had nothing to rebel against, nothing to pull my emotions from the limbo they had fallen into.
He's leaving, was the only thought running round and round in my head, he's leaving me again. Why is fate so cruel? Why ever let me see him again if he's only going to leave me? Why dangle the thought of happiness before my face only to remove it so mockingly? I want to die. When will this all be over? My god, please, I've lived so long to fulfil another's wishes, I've lived so long not even for myself, please, please don't taunt me with this mockery of feeling anything but duty. Please don't mock me with this travesty of love. Please just let me die.
An: I'm mean, poor Yoshitsuna for ending up one of my characters. I'm sorry this took so long! Really, really sorry! I hope you like it and yes, it ias getting near the end now, perhaps only another five or so chapters to go (maybe a little more)! And guess who's back next chapter!