Seuche
fatal, not serious…
a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

Part 23 – Änderung: In motion

“You know what he did?”

Ken, looking weary and pale yet still essentially shaken, hadn’t even taken his jacket off before grabbing Omi by the upper arm and practically dragging him from the shop floor. He didn’t let go until they’d made it into the relative privacy of the back rooms, utterly ignoring the look of abject bewilderment on the face of the pretty teenage girl, who obviously wasn’t even remotely interested in the small bromeliad she was holding, who had up until then been monopolizing Omi’s attention. Now, though, the heat drew his attention back to it and he quickly and absently shrugged it off, dropping it on one of the work surfaces and blinking in surprise when, looking up, he caught sight of Aya standing a few feet away.

Aya. Ken hadn’t noticed him appear; his sudden presence left Ken vaguely perturbed. Aya, recognizing genuine disquiet when he saw it, had followed them out. If Ken was feeling so anxious as to drag Omi from the shop without a word of explanation, the problem obviously couldn’t wait.

“No,” Omi said into the uneasy silence that followed, “what?”
Ken bit his lip, paused almost imperceptibly then said (quickly, his words tripping over themselves in his hurry to be rid of them, as if it would make what he had to say less troubling), “He spent all day at Shinjuku station.”
“What?” Omi asked in sheer surprise; Aya, caught in the frame of the door, frowned slightly. “He did what?”
“He did!” Ken retorted; something about the look on Aya’s face had him automatically on the defensive. “I thought I’d been seen and he was trying to lose me at first, but he was there all goddamned day and it got bloody difficult to keep him from spotting me! And I know it sounds stupid and not a big deal he was there all that time but it was, you didn’t see what he was doing there!”
“Ken-kun,” Omi said quickly, a nervous smile slipping across his open features, “calm down.” Grief, he thought, Ken-kun, you’ve really outdone yourself this time.
“Nobody’s accused you of overreacting, Ken,” Aya pointed out, implacable as ever. “What did he do?”

Ken – anonymity personified provided, of course, he took the trouble to see that he remained that way – had always been a logical kind of choice for a tail job. Where most of his teammates were, for their various reasons, only too easy to place in a crowd especially if one already knew their faces, Ken was forgettable. Ken would blend right in; he could, on a busy city street, have been lost forever only too easily and no bad thing Weiss had him. Accordingly, when it had been decided that (they were stuck; he had known it) someone was needed to follow Verwandlung’s Winters it had had been only logical Ken should be the one to volunteer for the job. Today had been the fourth consecutive day he had spent shadowing the Englishman’s movements and, the night prior, he’d been beginning to complain about the futility of it. Obviously he’d changed his mind.

“Well,” Ken said a little breathlessly, “first off he went everywhere. All over the station. He did it real methodical too, like he was following a floor plan.” Here Ken hesitated, frowning in thought – and that was the funny thing about detail, and the way it sometimes didn’t strike one as significant until after the fact. “He was following a floor plan. He had this little… you know those little notepad computer things they’re bringing out? Cost a goddamn fortune. He had one of those. I – well, you know what he looks like. Business-class… If you just saw him he looked like he was doing work or somesuch, but he wasn’t. He kept double-checking where he was heading then writing stuff down and I know we went places we weren’t supposed to. He was obviously checking the station out.”

Firmly said, leaving Aya and Omi no easy way to take refuge in comfortable skepticism. They knew Ken knew what he was talking about. They knew he didn’t worry for no reason. If Ken thought something was wrong he would have good reason for doing so. There probably was something wrong. All the same… Omi hated to admit it, but he couldn’t help but feel the theory vaguely hysterical. Shinjuku station?

“What that really all he did all day?” Omi asked, quiet and circumspectly curious. “Walk around Shinjuku station?”
“Kind of,” Ken replied, “but not really. He sat on the concourse for a while and just watched people and it really got pretty boring. Then he got talking to one of the train guards. An older guy. Bought him a coffee and everything… he said he was a foreign journalist doing a feature, the unimaginative bastard.”

It was out before he could stop himself and Ken grinned guiltily in wordless apology; Omi suppressed a small, almost accidental giggle. It took Aya to break the mood.

“What did he ask, Ken?”
“I couldn’t hear everything,” Ken said with an apologetic shrug, “but I got the general picture. He wanted to know when peak hour was, how many people used the station every day, if they saw more commuters in the land lines or the subways, that kind of thing. He asked what day they were busiest, too, either the guy got a talkative guard or the fucking idiot train guy was so flattered to be interviewed by a reporter he spilled damn near everything, or—” He broke off, suddenly troubled. Obviously whatever the third possibility was, Ken wasn’t going to elaborate on it just yet. “Anyway, he asked if he could take some pictures and the idiot only goddamn agreed.”
“It doesn’t sound promising, does it?” Omi said in a small, weary voice. “He really got lucky with that train guard.”
Ken looked discomfited, his expression growing, once again, subtly troubled. “Except… well, maybe he didn’t,” he said, with the slow, uncertain manner of a man grudgingly allowing himself to think the unthinkable. Seeming, almost, to brace himself for an obligation he knew he would find unpleasant but had no option but to fulfill. A familiar look, that, for any number of uncomfortable, inadmissible reasons. “I saw Schwarz.” Soft, awkward confession.

(In other words saw Schuldich.)

“Then you were compromised,” Aya said tersely, his eyes becoming hard, accusatory.
Ken bridled. “It wasn’t like I walked up and said Hi.” Did Aya really think he liked having the mad bastard anywhere near him?
“That means nothing,” Aya pointed out with scrupulous, icy calm, ignoring Ken's glare (Christ, wouldn’t the guy at least have the decency to get angry with him?). “If he was there…”
“Why in Hell not?” Ken countered. “I wasn’t exactly under escort!”
“But Ken-kun,” Omi said, and could hardly help but be uncomfortably aware it looked like he was taking sides, “Schuldich must have known you were there.”
“Yeah, he may have done, but if he did he didn’t tell Winters.” And all Aya did was look at him as if he were being hopelessly naïve. “You weren’t fucking there, Aya. Winters wasn’t acting like a guy who knew he was being watched. If he’d been trying to lose me he wouldn’t have just let me follow him round all goddamned day, would he?”

Suggestion of something Ken hardly knew was there. Aya pursed his lips slightly, a trait his companions recognized as implying thought. He looked frankly and insultingly unconvinced: he had no reason to disbelieve it. Aya had suspected relations between Verwandlung and Schwarz were possessed of a certain strain. Omi, too, had long thought the union had something slightly forced about it, a match made on the grounds of strictest convenience, predicated on the fact that they shared a common enemy – Weiss – and not on complementary goals. How long could any union between a man and his enemy’s enemy ever have lasted? Maybe they’d already beaten the odds…

It should have hardly surprised Aya to learn that Schwarz were keeping secrets from their supposed allies, but it seemed surprising they would have taken it so far as to withhold information about the actions of the adversary they shared: the one thing they truly held in common.

Ken didn’t like their sudden silence, their inattentiveness, the pointed glance Omi shot Aya – not only had he failed to notice the incongruity he would, judging by his expression, have remained stubbornly uninterested even if he had spotted anything of the sort. It made no difference to him what Schwarz thought they were up to when they’d have to fight them all the same. He’d always taken it very much for granted that the Schwarz were not to be trusted and, had it turned out that Verwandlung couldn’t trust them either, he would have thought nothing of it but it served the bastards right. Someone was missing the point here and Ken didn’t think it was him.

“So,” he said pointedly, hoping only to drag his teammates back to attentiveness, “they’re planning on hitting Shinjuku station, right?”

And felt he had just pronounced sentence. Stated like that, it sounded very final indeed.

All of a sudden, the little back room felt very close and crowded and far too warm. All of a sudden it felt very strange for the three of them, unlikely companions at the best of times, to be stood talking of terrorism whilst surrounded by precariously-heaped pots and sagging bags of potting compost; coiled spools of ribbon of every glaringly garish or softly unassuming shade; a clutter of plastic watering cans and a single stray gardening glove lying, forlornly pointed yet entirely overlooked, on the counter by Ken's elbow. The various impedimenta of the florist conspired to leave the three assassins stranded, horribly out of step with their surroundings, misplaced as one of Omi’s darts turning up amongst the placid petals of one of the last of the afternoon’s completed arrangements, stood frank and blameless on the work surface behind them. Ken didn’t think he’d ever really noticed the heavy smell of damp earth and forgotten pollen that clung to the room before now.

Well, that was one way for Yamanouchi to up the stakes, Omi thought numbly. She was thinking of targeting Shinjuku Station? There was definitely something hysterical about it and he clung to that idea for the hope it contained. It was not, this time, a captive audience Yamanouchi coveted. She wanted something different, wanted something fluid and ever-changing, wanted… Oh God, she was, Omi realized with a horrible thrill and no surprise at all, going to be using a pathogen. She just wanted to cause as much damage and as many deaths as possible. That was it. That was all that mattered. And Shinjuku Station… God, it hardly bore thinking about.

“It’s probable,” Aya said, and his voice was nothing but terrifyingly even. Facing up to cold fact had a way of enforcing a hideous calm. What would panic change?
“So what do we do about it?” Ken, eagerly abnegating responsibility. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. What should I do? “We can’t let them do it, can we? We’re not just going to go after them after the fact, right?” A genuine question, anxiously asked.
“No, we can’t do that,” Omi replied, soft and quick. “If that’s really what they’re after—”
“What?” Ken blinked. Only surprised. “Of course it is! Winters isn’t a fucking train spotter, Omi.”
“It’s a very big assumption, Ken-kun,” Omi said pacifically. “We’ve only got one shot at this. We simply can’t afford to take a chance. If we stake out one place and they target another, a lot of innocent people are going to die.” Again, it felt a very final thing to have to say.
“Bullshit, Omi! I know what I saw!”
“Nobody’s doubting what you saw, Ken,” Aya pointed out coolly. “But all that tells us is Verwandlung are interested in the place. It doesn’t prove that’s where they’re targeting and that’s all we’re interested in. We don’t have enough time to waste it on assumptions.”
Assumptions? What the Hell, Ken wondered, was wrong with the others at the moment? “Christ, Aya, not you too! What the Hell else was he doing there all day? He went to photograph the goddamned control room! Face the fucking facts! They’re hitting the station. End of story!” Angry. Forceful. Totally, horribly confident. Ken, it was clear, might not have understood how he could be so confident, but he knew for sure it was justified. Knew he was right. There could hardly help but be something demanding about it.

Even so, they slipped apart with nothing resolved, with all three of them caught in varying degrees of anger and resentment and trepidation. But you can never really deny the truth no matter how incredible it sounds, or how horrendous it might be. The best anyone can hope for is to uneasily skirt around it, and wait. Wait for familiarity to render it less unbearable or, perhaps, for it to prove itself nothing but undeniable. Fact is tenacious, lingering stubborn as stone long after the soft snowfall that is wishful thinking has melted away.

The truth has claws, and clings deep.

And she smiled, and it was terrible. Her smile was a sick, mirthless little thing, yanking at and twisting the corners of the thin burgundy slash that was her lips, further warping the already contorted planes of the face she had always known was too thin and too angular for beauty. She smiled, and all she looked was feral. Her smile was a paradox, rendered preposterous by context. Surely that face had never been designed to smile.

If nothing else she colored herself a survivor.

Doctor Nishida smiled and barely realized how it painted her face in the hues of wild and terrible triumph, and felt indefinably slighted by President Yamanouchi’s unmistakable expression of mild distaste. It was hardly what she would have accorded suitable for the bearer of good news. She was a strange one though, the Yamanouchi woman, her reactions hard to predict and even more so to fathom. Perhaps, the Doctor thought, Yamanouchi had frowned because she saw in Nishida’s own rise – the rise to prominence she had, albeit unwillingly, ushered in – her own power base fractionally yet obviously undermined?

Perhaps. For a moment, there was nothing but silence in that opulent corner office as the two women stared at one another, Yamanouchi coldly disdainful, Nishida all smug, slick satisfaction. The aces were in her hands, she had Yamanouchi where she wanted her. Had her off-guard, outwitted – outnumbered. The smug look in her eyes was mirrored in those of Doctor Keishi Takano, the long-limbed, angular young man she had taken as her own protégé and who stood two respectful paces behind her. He was a man of planes and lines, as if both form and features had been drawn with a ruler. Even his glasses were rectangular and his hair looked like he combed it with a chisel. His gaze was sharp, inquiring and nothing if not unsettling. Yamanouchi had disapproved of him on sight: such men, she knew, were dangerous, or could easily become so.

Setsuna Yamanouchi was no fool. She understood all too clearly that Nishida saw her capitulation, in the wake of the loss of Professor Sturm, to the second best that was her own appointment as a victory over more considered judgment; more, as a vindication of her own ambitions. Amazing how easily an otherwise terrifyingly intelligent woman could slip into self-delusion, but maybe it should have come as no surprise when it allowed her to pretend that she mattered…?

Pursing her lips in a visible statement of her hard-repressed disapproval, Yamanouchi turned from Nishida to the papers stacked on her desk in something akin to discomfiture. She only wished the wretched woman wouldn’t insist on smiling. Wasn’t it obvious she’d succeeded without gloating over it? What a difference between the Professor and his successor (oh, the handover was not going smoothly; hardly to be accounted surprising that Yamanouchi resented her), a difference Yamanouchi didn’t rightly approve of…

The one thing she could say, though – the woman had vision.

All the same she couldn’t bring herself to smile back at that twisted, smirking face. “What is it, Doctor Nishida?” She asked. Firm, even demanding. “And make it quick. A President’s time is valuable, and I have work to attend to.”
“There’s no need to take that tone, President,” Nishida said almost chidingly, ignoring the way the younger woman visibly bristled. “I merely thought you may wish to know we were ready to proceed.”
Proceed? Speaking in tongues, of course. “Very well— Doctor, may I remind you that I told you not to bother me with things like this during the working day?”
“Certainly, and you know as well as I do how unnecessary that proscription is, President.” Nishida spat Yamanouchi’s title at her as if it were some obscure curse, as if there were something shameful about being President of anything… how petty it seemed. “Kameda is with us, as is Takano, and who else knows I am here to talk to you? You’re becoming paranoid.” Synonymous with self-indulgent.

And it should have been a stupid, baseless accusation, but it stung Yamanouchi for no reason other than there was an element of truth in it. Perhaps she was becoming paranoid – she had never minded when Professor Sturm chose to disturb her. She hadn’t, she knew, always proved so cautious, so guarded in her responses and why (or so she had assumed) should she? Akutagawa was hers to use as she saw fit; Verwandlung her own hand-picked cabal and little more than a pleasant way to kill the time she had to abundance… it truly had been like a game at first, but what was she to do when the board turned against her, the game turned suddenly all too serious and yet still she found she couldn’t cut her losses, get up and walk away?

Yamanouchi was beginning to feel hedged in. Harried. The Schwarz were playing more and more to their own agenda, an agenda they had chosen not to share: Crawford’s men were slipping, slow but inexorable, from her control and from there out of reach, becoming not allies but contenders in their own right (oh, poor Shinobu… and you were right, weren’t you?). Weiss – four boys making trouble, somebody’s tool but whose? – wanted her dead for no reason other than what she symbolized and they, she was sure, wouldn’t stop trying until she was dead, or they were. She was losing control and had to seize it back somehow, by force if needs be. It was time to change the rules. Her adversaries had got too good at playing to the old ones. This was her game, not Weiss’s!

And, somewhere to the back of her mind, mundane concerns – concerns built of the stuff on which empires crumbled.

At first Yamanouchi had assumed the investigators at the wreckage of her Tsurugamine plant merely dilatory, dragging their feet for no reason more sinister than stupidity or rank incompetence. At first she’d been quietly angry, complaining to Hikaru about the wasted time, the need to contact loss adjusters and architects and construction companies – seeking only to get the plant back into working order. Her company was losing time and money and the sooner they got started the better. That was until the police were called back in and once again seized control of the search. You suspect arson? Hikaru had asked them hopefully. I'm afraid it may prove rather more sinister than that, sir, the sober detective replied…

If she was paranoid, it was because the world was making her so.

For there were too many corpses. Far too many corpses already for them to be explained away as those of the staff identified as being on site that evening…

“You overstep the mark, Doctor,” Yamanouchi sneered. “You seem to forget that, paranoid or not, I have a company to run. I would appreciate it if you were to come to the point and allow me to carry on running it.”
“Very well,” Nishida replied quietly. “As I was saying, President Yamanouchi, from what Winters has told us of the target site we will be ready to proceed whenever you may care to give the word. Takano’s preliminary testing suggests the previous devices will suffice after all.”
“Good. I am glad to hear it, Doctor.” Yamanouchi spoke briskly, but she couldn’t quite had the malicious little smile that twisted the corners of her lips. It was, she thought, about time. With events progressing as they were and uncertain weather ahead they could hardly afford any further delay, another mishap— “In that case, I would like the device redesigned after all. The old ones were too easily disarmed.”
Nishida frowned disapprovingly. “You fear another intervention?” She asked suspiciously.
“No, Doctor.” Yamanouchi’s voice remained as firmly inflectionless as ever, but Nishida detected a certain weary edge to her tones where there had been none before, a subtle stirring of anxiety in the eyes which had, before, been nothing if not untroubled. “But I expect one.”

Nishida said nothing. She only nodded in acquiescence, but her expression was scathing as she stepped from the room, the silent Takano dogging her footsteps. As the door clicked softly to behind her, Yamanouchi visibly relaxed. She should have sent Nakayama and Winters for Andou sooner, as soon as they’d known Stern was a success; she could have used him now. Or, perhaps, she should have let Weiss kill Nishida after all. Taking the wretched woman in at all had, perhaps, been nothing but a mistake.

Yes, she expected it. How could she not? Weiss were becoming a detriment, more, a danger. Her only hope was to make her move before they could pre-empt her. The understanding that there was very little personal about it, that Weiss came for her only because they had been ordered to and such orders were to be obeyed, left her chilled. The one they’d had taken, for a time (and what had his name been? Something quite absurdly common, and too much so to stick in the mind) might have begged to differ, but as a group they bore her no grudge other than her continued existence.

Weiss wanted her dead, and she didn’t even know who they—

“Florists?”

“… well, ever so slightly weird, actually.”

Komachi’s normally porcelain cheeks were delicately flushed, her playful eyes filled with an expression of frank admiration as she gazed up at the tall figure of Crawford. An admiration she would perhaps have denied if called upon, but which she could never have claimed wasn’t there. Funny, she thought, how people’s opinions could change.

The four Schwarz had never made any secret of their total lack of interest in her before now and she, in her turn, had likewise steered clear of them. She had told herself it was disinclination rather than roused anger or wounded pride at being so easily overlooked. They wanted her now though and it was exhilarating, after all this time, to be seen. To finally get to talk to them, the professionals. Naoe she found no difficulty in disliking still; the grave telekinetic reminded her, in a gentle, understated kind of way, of Shinobu – it may have been nothing but youth and detachment but it was an eerie feeling, and not a feeling Komachi liked to indulge. The others, however…

Patrician Crawford in particular she judged exceptionally impressive. A man who had completely mastered his own destiny, who had only to step into a room to effortlessly dominate it, with nothing to do but watch the groundlings fall into awed and reverential silence. Yes, she judged him a fine figure of a man. Hard to believe she hadn’t noticed it, before.

(And she tugged at her curls to keep herself from smiling too openly.)

“Weird,” Crawford said blandly, the colloquialism awkward on his lips. “Very well, she was weird. In what way?”
“Well, it was really just the things she asked. They seemed… more than a little off. I’ve never known her ask such strange questions before.” Komachi giggled and did so abashedly, ducking her head to glance up at the man from the safety of her curls. “And her attitude, too, that was…”

Out of place. Schuldich, all suspicious, even parodic composure, exchanged a quick, pointed glance with Crawford – and it was as nothing, really; merely a brief flick of the eyes and no wonder Komachi failed to pick up on it. Yamanouchi, Schuldich understood, was beginning to lose her grip. More, she was allowing herself to realize it. Fatal.

—and far from fortuitous that Komachi had allowed the new memories to slip to the forefront of her consciousness. All too easy for Schuldich, letting his shields drop, to sample those thoughts with all the pedantic fastidiousness of the true gourmet. Confusion there, and awkwardness, and the strange suspended feeling that stepping into that hushed corner office had engendered and gazing, from the strained and discreetly painful periphery of vision, the dilatory hands of a wall-mounted clock, willing time to pass and the interview to be concluded. And brusque, staccato questions barked rapid-fire, one after the next after the next until all patience was gone – for Christ’s sakes, President, will you just let me speak?

And, finally, confirmation.

(Yes, I did say they were florists. Some cute little corner store. Some cute little name. Something about kitty cats…)

Which wasn’t what Schwarz wanted at all. The last thing Crawford wanted was to see Yamanouchi distracted, never mind distracted by Weiss. Far better – for Schwarz’s plans at least – that she thought of them the way she always had done, as a group of infuriatingly persistent boys, making trouble only because it suited them to do so. Far better she consider them as unworthy of her attention.

“I thought we were moving in,” Komachi complained, her blue eyes full of a certain petulant resentment. Still something of the child about this one. “Why do we have to worry about a group of stupid florists? Can’t we just get on with it? We handled Weiss before! The only reason they’re still alive is they keep getting lucky!”
“Of course,” Crawford said smoothly, with a smooth little smile it should have been impossible to trust. “They’re exceptionally good at that.”

And he stepped away, tall and sardonic and unknowable, Schuldich drifting idly in his wake; he might as well follow, he had nowhere else to be. The conversation, Komachi realized, was over. All there was to do was turn, caught in the center of the corridor the Schwarz had surprised her in, and watch them leave, headed in the direction she had only recently come from. Headed for Yamanouchi’s office…

But what in the world did they want from her?

It was nothing unusual for Youji to arrive home and be greeted by the sound of voices raised in argument; it was no surprise at all for him to identify them as belonging to Aya and Ken. No surprise, and yet he still quirked a single brow in a silent statement as, slowly, deliberately carefully, he took off his coat, shaking it out and making a production of draping it across one arm. Hoping, like a teenager accidentally walking in on his parents arguing, that if he were to take his time about his arrival they might have stopped shouting by the time he actually made it out of the hallway, that he would walk in on nothing more scarring than the too-emphatic hush that follows disagreement, with both parties only pointedly ignoring one another…

No chance of that, he thought wearily, with these two. There always had been something hideously persistent about Ken's – best call it his occasional disagreements with Aya, but Jesus, they’d been getting the hang of one another. How long had it been since he’d last heard them tearing into one another like this? Youji was sure it had been months. This sounded serious. This sounded bad.

Ken sounded enraged.

“I can still fucking function, for Christ’s sake!”
“Nobody’s doubting your abilities, Ken.”
“Then why won’t you listen to me any more?!”

(Youji almost felt sorry for Aya.)

Stood, atypically hesitant, in the body of the shop, he considered shouting out a greeting, a warning he was there: you can be heard, guys, you can cut it out now – but what was the point? Youji doubted either of them would have heard him and even should they have done anything of the sort, neither would have cared. Oh, Hell. Part of Youji, and it was a large part, wanted to steer well clear. Why get involved? Aya and Ken were both reasonable, rational, grown-up assassins, weren’t they?

Okay, so Youji admitted they probably weren’t. They were probably nothing of the sort. They – Ken was a kid, a mess, a problem; all Aya was good for, here and now at least, was provoking him. Ken would be infuriating himself every bit as much as Aya was aggravating him, whether intentionally or no, and him almost totally unable to back down. Surrender never had been in Ken's nature. It sure as Hell wasn’t now. What was wrong with Ken, why did he keep on doing this to himself?

“Can’t you trust me?”
“You’re reading too much into this, Hidaka.”
“If it’s not my abilities, what in Hell is it?”

It was only now long acquaintance had Youji recognize Ken sounded more frustrated than furious and more upset than either. God dammit, Aya.

Which, he was forced to admit, and reluctantly, even guiltily at that, rather changed the complexion of things. Rather forced his hand. Of course Ken could fight his own battles, but that didn’t stop him coming from them dazed and bloody and, though Ken would of course be damned before he’d willingly admit to it, hurting. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be grateful for the help even if he’d never admit to that one either. Sighing (it might have been nothing but resignation, a quiet acceptance of a fact both unpleasant and unavoidable; this was only the way things were), Youji turned to the stairs. It hardly seemed to matter that it was none of his business.

“—don’t tell me. It’s my goddamn mental state!”

Ken, all angry fire in the face of Aya’s contemptuous chill, stood furious. Sounded furious. His voice was harsh and unbecomingly strident, charged with unbearably palpable emotion, his back stiff and jaw set and, though he held his hands by his sides, his fists were clenched. He was all coiled anger, poised and waiting for nothing but a chance to strike: only his eyes looked out of place, a single note of dissonance in an otherwise harmonious whole. His eyes looked wrong in his face, the emotion trapped in them disclosing something quite other than rage. They were only a betrayal. The look in his eyes left Ken only essentially naked.

The minute Ken moved forward he was only dragged right back. Probably it wasn’t even Aya’s fault: it wasn’t as if Ken were the stablest guy out there, or as if he were entirely incapable of jumping to the wrong conclusion only because his temper had been roused or his pride wounded, but it was hardly Ken's fault either. Ken hadn’t asked for Schuldich to leave him so scarred, so desperate to prove himself… Aya really should have known better.

(Because, much as it hurt to admit it, they couldn’t trust Ken to know anything of the sort.)

Something told Youji to hang back, at least for now. Lounging soft and silent and unregarded, hesitating in the doorway at the head of the stairs with a cigarette pointlessly burning in the hand he had let rest casually on the frame, what could he do but wait, blend into the background and lose himself against it? His life, once upon a time, had been little but watching and waiting. His eyes slightly narrowed as if in concentration or, perhaps, only as if being stung by the smoke of his cigarette, he waited. Waited for the argument to peter out, for Aya or Ken or both to notice him. For whatever happened next to happen. It was none of his business. All of his business. My team too.

At first Aya said nothing. Then he said, voice scrupulously icy, “I told you to let that go.”
“Then you let it fucking go!” Ken retorted furiously. “Trust me.” Trust me not to screw up, to know what I'm talking about.
“It’s got nothing to do with not trusting you,” Aya snapped. “You’re too involved, Ken.”
Ken bridled. Youji hardly blamed him. “Like I said, Fujimiya, you’re a goddamned hypocrite! Listen to yourself! What in fuck do you think you sound like, you arrogant asshole? I’m too involved? At least I’m not about to walk out on the entire goddamn team because I'm too caught up with my own agenda to care if I’m fucking over everyone else!”
“That wasn’t the same. You’re being simplistic.” And the look in Aya’s narrow eyes made Youji want to wince. It spoke volumes about how angry Ken must have been that he ignored it utterly.
“Bullshit it wasn’t! Aya—” almost beseeching now, “—Aya, I trust you. You nearly got us all killed over your stupid fucking thing for Takatori and I can still trust you. Why am I so different? What’s changed?”
Not that it seemed to matter to Aya what Ken made of him. The look in his eyes didn’t soften a bit. His face stayed as stony as ever. “Why bring that up? Takatori has nothing to do with this. I have nothing to do with it. You’re the issue.”

He couldn’t have said anything worse.

Ken flinched visibly, as if Aya had struck him. He would probably have been far happier to be hit. “Schuldich raped me,” he said flatly, and it amazed him that he could state it so simply, with such terrible calm. It occurred to Ken, all of a sudden, that he’d never actually said it before. “Nothing else has changed.”

And he pushed quickly, aggressively past Aya and made for the stairs, utterly erasing his teammate with nothing more than a simple turn of the head. What else could there ever have been for them to say? What else, even, was left to him? Aya didn’t follow, refused to so much as glance in Ken's direction, his posture betraying only resentment. Hardly his fault Ken was fucked up and yet all Youji felt for the man was cold disdain. All he thought was Jesus Christ, Aya. You insensitive prick. The last thing Aya should have done was slighted Ken's competence. He hardly believed in himself as it was.

It wasn’t, God knew, like Ken had much left to lose.

“Not now, Youji.”

Youji hadn’t meant to catch Ken by the wrist. Hardly realized he’d done it until his fingers closed about it, and he felt Ken hesitate. Ken had such deceptive hands. His wrist felt so slender, so fragile… It seemed as if it would be nothing to break it. Didn’t mean a single goddamn thing. There had been something Youji needed to say and yet somehow, now Ken came to look up at him, all careful distance and soft restraint, he couldn’t remember what it was let alone why it was so important Ken knew it… His face was nothing at all, closed off and composed as a death mask. Fighting, Youji could tell, for control and getting far too good at it.

“Please.”
He let go. Stepped back. Such a quiet, weary thing, that flat little plea. Such a horribly atypical thing for Ken to do, to plead for anything… “Shit,” Youji heard himself say. “Sorry.”
For a moment he thought Ken wasn’t going to reply. He only pulled away, moving hurriedly from Youji’s reach and surveying him suspiciously from behind a fall of hair, Then he said, in the same frighteningly dead voice, “It’s my problem. Don’t you dare, Kudou. Don’t you fucking dare.”

And turned and slipped quietly from the room and something – the way he looked, or perhaps the way he had spoken – told Youji to let him leave. A calm enough exit, and yet what could that ever have meant? Somewhere in the shop, he heard a door emphatically slam. Ken wasn’t, Youji could tell, truly upset. He was only angry and forcefully, furiously so. Probably no bad thing he was getting the Hell away…

“Aya?” Youji said to the redhead’s turned back, somehow managing to keep his voice nothing but curious, “What was all that about?”
“Nothing,” Aya said, and said it almost reflexively. He turned to regard Youji, now hovering at the foot of the stairs, his posture telling a tale of indecent curiosity which was, once again, belied by the hard, measured anger that had slipped into normally sleepy green eyes. “What do you want, Youji?” Resentful. Well, Youji noted without any surprise, this was Aya.
“Nothing,” Youji echoed. “Sure didn’t sound like ‘nothing’ from where I was standing. Jesus, Aya, I really thought you two were getting the hang of each other. Guess I was wrong, huh?” He smiled, a lopsided thing that had nothing to do with his eyes, and very little to do with genuine good humor.
“Have you come here for a reason,” Aya asked, clearly not fooled for a moment by the decoy that was Youji’s smile, “or do you have nothing better to do than fight Hidaka’s battles for him?”
“You’re a prick, Fujimiya,” Youji said calmly, talking through his smile, ignoring the way Aya discreetly bristled as if he hadn’t actually realized he had said anything insulting. “This has nothing to do with fighting Ken's battles for him when you know as well as I do he hardly needs the help. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you guys choose to argue about. Just… back off him, okay? Ken hasn’t let us down before and in my opinion he’s not about to start. Fucked up to all Hell he may be but we can at least trust him to do his job. What’ve we got?”

It took Aya a moment or so to recognize the change of topic and, with it, the sudden shift in Youji’s tone. The exasperation slipped from his voice, to be replaced with a certain clipped direction. It was, almost, a relief. It spared him from having to acknowledge having heard Youji’s rebukes, stopped him looking petty for failing to do anything of the sort. Eyes carefully averted, he turned to the idling computer. Said simply, “A possibility.”

Nothing so benign.

Certainty. It slipped into view only reluctantly, as if hard fact had chosen to skulk, half-hidden and unasked-after, awkwardly in the shadows, unwilling to admit it had been found out. Fact crept slow and infuriating, but only ever tediously fulfilling dour expectation. Sometimes you don’t want to be right; sometimes there is absolutely no satisfaction at all in being proved so. Comforting to imagine unpleasant veracity as nothing more than hysterical speculation on the part of a teammate both erratic and unreliable – and who proved, when it came down to it, to be nothing of the sort and only too trustworthy after all.

No, Ken found nothing positive in being proved prescient rather than rash, the theories even he had wanted to consider crazy revealed as only too rational. Deep down, he thought he would far rather Aya had been correct after all. He would far rather have been overreacting to something which was nothing. Ken hadn’t wanted to be proved right. That he had been was no consolation at all. What the Hell kind of satisfaction was he supposed to find in that?

“See,” Omi said to the computer screen, his eyes fixed on a single, endlessly looping snatch of video showing at first glance nothing more revealing than the vague shadows of men and women drifting aimless as ghosts through the accidental, illusory dust storm that was the world caught on CCTV, “they come back and back. This is yesterday… Oedo line interchange. Eleven-ten.”
“Winters again.” Youji spoke softly. An instinct from a previous life had him adding, almost as an afterthought, “You’d think Yamanouchi’d know the guy was too distinctive for this.”
“That’s as maybe, Youji-kun,” Omi replied distractedly; it was a struggle, in the face of the computer, for his attention to be caught and held by something as simple as conversation. “But they’re not expecting anyone to be watching, right? Besides, he’s claiming to be a journalist. You saw how he got into the control rooms.”
“Yeah,” Youji admitted. “You know, I was really hoping Ken had made that bit up…” Not that it would have been in Ken's nature to do anything of the sort.

Even on the imprecise, misty CCTV tapes Winters stood out all too obviously. His height, his Western build, that rebellious tangle of flaxen hair all conspired to leave him only terribly misplaced amongst the comparatively smaller, darker forms of the Japanese who made up the clear majority of the station’s users. Difficult to pin down a single individual caught on CCTV when there was so much footage to choose from and so little of it relevant (“You’re looking at security tapes, Omi?” Ken had exclaimed incredulously. “But there must be miles of that crap!”), but not so difficult when one’s target was so obstinately distinctive. When he showed up time and time again…

Much harder to pick out Ken, even when one knew where they were looking. Omi had spotted him once, seen someone who might have been him thrice. Far harder, too, to spot the Schwarz never mind their own distinction. There was something vaguely worrying about it. About how amateurish Verwandlung were proving.

(Which, of course, only made them more dangerous.)

I can’t think why he’d keep going back, Omi had admitted, if Yamanouchi wasn’t interested in the station for something or other… no, it wasn’t looking good at all. So much for that’s a big assumption. So much for the hope – for hope it had been – that it might, in the end, all come to nothing. Shinjuku station, for God’s sake. Had to be for the sake of the gesture: hard to explain why but Weiss had, in their various ways, all picked up on the subtle desperation of such a plan. Yamanouchi wasn’t upping the stakes for the sake of it. Something had happened to provoke it, but what?

“She’s gambling,” Youji said, and his smile was wry, even almost playful. “Question is, what on?”

(And a nothing of an article in a local paper about a quote-unquote strange discovery made by investigators at the ruins that were Akutagawa’s Tsurugamine plant. A few short paragraphs which had Aya, barefoot over breakfast, raising one eyebrow in silent comment. Welcome, President, to the world.)

All of which proved only that something was due to happen. It still got them no nearer to working out when it was planned. At this rate, Ken had said sarcastically, they’d wind up finding out about it when people started dropping dead on Omi’s stupid tapes. That Weiss hadn’t been designed for reconnaissance only made it one bit harder and aggravatingly, unnecessarily so. Only Omi and Youji really brought the necessary application to the job. Ken had no illusions about his own abilities as far as a preliminary investigation was concerned. He hadn’t been designed for it. Hadn’t been designed to wait.

It was all very well, he thought, knowing danger lay ahead, knowing too that you could at least attempt to do something about it, but without knowing when it would happen – well, shit, they’d have been better off (if one were to ask Ken's opinion) knowing nothing at all. Nothing would change; at least they wouldn’t have to feel guilty when it all fell apart…

Why couldn’t someone else worry about it? Just for once…

And tourist maps, which were worse than useless, and plans which weren’t much better, and architect’s blueprints acquired from slightly less than legal sources, rendered slightly blurred by being printed out at three times the size and draped across the shop table, the only surface big enough and clear enough to hold them, like some bizarre tablecloth. The kitchen clock showing twenty to four and Omi frowning and stifling a yawn, tapping the end of his pen against the paper as he thought –trying to work out where to look never mind that he didn’t know when – and, next to him, a cup half full of cold black coffee, leaving faint brown rings on the paper it rested on. Ken asleep at the table with his head resting on his bare forearms, a pencil gripped loosely in the fingers of one hand.

They were going round in circles, and trying to second-guess Yamanouchi because there was nothing else to do. Youji, stood in the middle of the shop floor unenthusiastically sniping at an impassive Aya over nothing at all, all weary limbs and angry frustration after a failure of a day spent staking out the station, seeing nothing, finding nothing. No sign of Winters…

Chance had it. Chance, and an uncharacteristic slip, and the sudden indiscretion of an inter-office email from someone calling themselves Hikaru Kameda. Omi, wandering the virtual back alleys of Akutagawa’s computer network through nothing but sheer frustration, should never have seen it. Nearly overlooked it. He couldn’t have explained why he hadn’t. Re: Public transport (and it looked, or so Omi supposed, official enough). Due to emergency engineering works, East Japan Rail Company have advised staff who usually travel to work via Shinjuku station to find an alternative route on Friday morning to avoid unnecessary delay—

“She’s warned her staff!”

Thursday evening came in shades of gold and orange and red, the sun low and sullen and lingering petulantly behind trailing filaments of cloud. Youji woke to find himself lying in a room whose air glistened like gold dust, the light of the dying day falling soft and intrusive onto his face. So, he’d managed to find sleep after all, accidentally though it may have been. Odd thing, he wasn’t in the least bit tired. Blinking and yawning, he slipped out of bed and onto his feet in one single graceful motion, padding softly over to the shower and pointedly ignoring the clothes hanging over the back of a chair. No need to think about what to wear. Youji sighed, and idly scratched his head, and accepted it.

It was, he thought, going to be one of those nights.

It had been Omi’s idea to leave Momoe to handle the store alone. It wasn’t, the teenager had pointed out pragmatically, like tonight wasn’t going to be demanding enough without doing it exhausted, too. Flowers and schoolgirls, he had said, would have to wait.

No point in lingering over the shower. No point in worrying too much about the clothes or the hair when it wasn’t even as if it would postpone anything. It wasn’t as if, he thought as he idly finger-combed his hair, anyone would care what he looked like now when he had nobody to impress but his teammates and in all likelihood he’d come home (if he came home, but try not to think of that) looking like shit regardless… He might not have felt tired but, as he glanced into the mirror to check, from habit alone, the fall of his still-damp curls Youji realized he looked it – but that wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t exhaustion that marked his face but anxiety, subtle strain. The sunglasses, when he settled them carefully on the bridge of his nose, hid the worst of it.

Placing a cigarette between his lips, he stepped from the apartment and nearly walked into Ken.

“Oh,” Ken said flatly. “I, uh… thought you were asleep.”

And, letting his hand fall (he had, it seemed, been reaching for the door handle), he stepped back to let Youji past and his eyes were full of uncertainty, as if he didn’t quite know what he was doing there. His hands, Youji noticed, were bare and he fidgeted slightly with the strap of his goggles, which currently hung loosely about his neck; otherwise he looked no different and yet he looked essentially unprepared. Something in Ken said he didn’t really want to go anywhere and when Youji met his eyes he hastily looked away. He was blushing, just slightly, but blushing all the same.

(God, and that blush, the averted eyes, the slightly parted lips… it shouldn’t have mattered that Ken was beautiful.)

So Youji smiled at him; a small, gentle, genuine smile which felt odd on his lips and caught Ken off-guard. “Well, I’m not,” was all he could think of to say. He’d picked up on the contagion that was Ken's inexplicable nervousness, found himself surrendering to it too. Felt like, Christ, like high school. “I’m guessing we’re ready to go?”
“Well,” Ken fidgeted slightly, awkwardly shifting his weight, “near enough as… I really thought I’d have to wake you up, you know. You get to sleep?” Oh, God, and why had he had to go and ask Youji that? He knew what would follow sure as rain in April… Jesus, Hidaka, you walked into that.
Youji blinked. He frowned. “Did you?”
“Kind of,” Ken said noncommittally and far too quickly, and winced inwardly at the bluntly dubious look that darted quickly across Youji’s face. You’re not kidding anyone, Ken. When, he wondered, had Youji stopped believing him? He’d used to believe him, or had been able to pretend likewise… “Well, not exactly. No.” He ducked his head, embarrassed. His grin was sudden and awkward and wrong and shouldn’t have been there at all.
Youji closed his eyes, shook his head in weary resignation. “Don’t,” was all he said.
Ken blinked at him. “Don’t what?”
“Your smile’s slipping,” Youji pointed out. Quietly, sadly, as if he were wishing it weren’t true. Don’t smile because you have to, Ken. That’s not the way it works…
“Yeah,” Ken said simply, soft as sighing, “it does that sometimes.”

For a moment Youji merely looked at him. Looked, and was watched back, Ken studying him thoughtfully from the corners of his eyes. No anxiety there, no fear or tension, just simple deliberation. It seemed almost as if Ken had decided he were some strange kind of puzzle and were trying to work out how he should go about solving it, or if it even needed a solution at all. Maybe there was nothing to understand. Maybe all he could do was accept it.

But it seemed a very strange thing for Youji to decide he wanted, and not at all what Ken might have expected from him. Who was this man, anyway? Had he ever known? Just when he thought he had a handle on his teammates, any of them, all of them, they turned round and did something like… No, it was just Youji. The other two could only too easily catch him by surprise, but they didn’t confuse him the way Youji did. They didn’t leave him off-guard and anxious and thankful.

(None of them should ever have met; all they shared was inadmissible…)

The odd thing was Ken didn’t think he minded. Knew he should have done, but somehow he didn’t. The odd thing was, he trusted Youji. Even could he have afforded not to, he wouldn’t have known how. He tried for another smile and it felt tight and strange and wistful, hardly like a smile at all, but this time Youji said nothing. He simply waited, grave and sentry-watchful. Funny, really; of all the people Ken might have reasonably expected to know the value of silence, this man wouldn’t have been one of them. Youji knew. He always had done.

Single, strange, suspended moment, that, the unquiet turmoil of the evening city seeming to fall back, leaving them caught nowhere in particular and headed no place at all. And something unsaid between them and Ken could have left it at that, but he didn’t. Men like himself didn’t have the luxury of picking their moment. Ken never had been one for playing coy.

“Thanks,” he said suddenly.

And brushed past Youji, and gently and hesitantly touched his hand, and slipped far too quickly away, head held high. Only looking forwards.

-to be continued-

Still alive.

Yeah, this fic's still hanging in here, just. I have no excuse, only an explanation: I've been diagnosed with depression which makes it very difficut to care about pretty much anything sometimes, let alone my writing. I've been struggling with it pretty much all year, with a brief respite of about a month and a half before it came back with a vengeanace. Not long enough for a slow writer like myself to get very far with my solo projects. So, in an attempt to atone for sitting on this story for the best part of a year again (on top of my Angst Issues I've been dithering over wanting to edit the opening, which I now really dislike, and whether I should do that first or just finish the damn thing already) I've decided, after talking it over with my friends, to break into my buffer. I now have three chapters, not four, in hand and suspect I won't even notice the difference.

I'd like, once again, to thank to anyone who's still reading. Thank you for bearing with me, and with this fic. I just hope you think it's been worth it. Here's hoping it won't take anywhere near as long to post the next chapter - I can always hope, I guess.

Comments and criticism are, as always, welcome.