AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is likely the last prequel fic to Whispers, which bridges the gap between it and One More Murder. Essentially it explains how Aya and Omi's relationship ended up 'on again' by the time Ryou meets up with them. Breathing Room A Weiss Gluhen Fanfiction by Amet "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it."          ~ W. C. Fields ------- It's been a long week. Plans to rebuild the former Esset elite school Koua Academy are finally settled and it is with great pride that Persia announces to those of his employees who need to know that it will be remade in Kritiker's decidedly less nefarious image, a training ground for anti-terrorist teams of the future. This should be a relief, but any satisfaction Persia might have felt at finishing one phase of the project flits away as soon as the news comes within shouting distance of Honjou Yuushi, who is infuriated that his Crashers have been tapped to oversee training of the new Weiss recruits when the school is rebuilt. He wants nothing to do with the Takatori zaibatsu's assassin games, he says, and Persia should know Ran would be furious if he were here to see Persia perverting the ethics of Kritiker training children to murder in the place of grown men. Persia hasn't the heart to inform poor misguided Honjou-san that it is impossible to pervert standard practice. He knows where Honjou-san's anger comes from and he understands, but it is difficult to maintain his composure after a six day battle with one who has had the benefit of Ran's verbal sparring to sharpen his tongue. Knight likes to hold Ran against him, invoke the Abyssinian's ghost with startlingly childish regularity and it is only the thought of how disappointed Ran himself would be that keeps him from bodily knocking the overzealous man down a peg. Persia was once a member of Weiss after all, and they are more infamous than Crashers, more ruthless and he has no doubt which of them would win that fight. Neither does Honjou-san, with his clinging to chivalry and honor and it is the only thing keeping them from coming to blows. Persia keeps his secrets. He will not tell Honjou-san that Ran is still out there -- alive and killing on his own, lost in a foreign land but free from all of this, the trappings of Kritiker and the Takatori zaibatsu. He changes his MO, kills with a new weapon, keeps his hair short and wears a new uniform, but Persia is watching still and he has no doubt that Ran knows this. He will not tell Honjou-san how much he regrets that it has come to this, the way the longing tastes of ash in his mouth when he is forced to speak of Ran, that his own unthinking hubris drove his lover away. He will not tell Honjou-san that Ran was his lover, the only man he will ever take to his bed because no one can compare to that ferocity, that flame of spirit, banked for a time and now roaring with righteous anger, a heat Persia imagines he can feel even an ocean away, threatening to consume him even from afar. Honjou-san needs to cling to the illusion that he knew -- knows Ran better, that he kept his confidences and if nothing else Knight is needed to lead the Crashers team more than ever in this time of flux and confusion. There has been a lack of competent, trustworthy employees at Kritiker since the fourth Weiss team's untimely staged demise, and the fact that Honjou-san does not like him one iota is beside the point in the face of his exemplary record. Which doesn't mean Persia has to deal with the man 24/7 and it doesn't stop him from banning Honjou-san from his office on the seventh day of arguing, with a half hysterical bark of laughter when he overhears Rex informing Honjou-san of the restriction by haughtily reminding Knight that if he was so intent on inscribing Persia with all the omniscient powers of God so that every mistake and fallacy of the organization should have been foreseen, prevented, he will have to understand that on the seventh day He rested. Not that Rex is religious, mind you, she just likes finding creative ways of being sanctimonious. He sits at his desk, stares at the stacks of unfinished paperwork strewn across its massive, impersonal surface and tries to figure out what to do with his moment of peace. He can work, he supposes, though he never can make a dent in the deluge that seems to constantly flood his inbox. He can stare at the fish tank and watch the horribly expensive salt water specimens go about their daily lives in their staged little mini-sea, try not to think about how much he still feels like he's living on display, posing for cameras with a smile that will never reach his eyes, putting on a show to hide the shadows from all the real people with real lives, with jobs that don't involve ordering more than a dozen assassinations a month and families who don't have taxidermists permanently on call to prepare the dead. He tries not to think, because it hurts. It makes him feel. He's felt nothing for more than a month, not since that first unnerving phone call from Ken-kun, who has more phone privileges than his fellow prisoners as per the specifications of Persia's agreement with Tokyo Prison and can afford to waste a call or six when he's upset. He uses it sporadically, but Persia resists the urge to check up on who he contacts. It's the least he can do for Ken, now that he's ruined everything. His old friend is perfectly amiable, which somehow hurts more than if he were yelling, as if everything that passed between them was nothing. Persia is speechless when Ken calmly informs him that he's been in contact with Ran, their Aya, and he hasn't been able to reach him in weeks. It takes a moment for Persia to realize that it's been at least that long since a report has crossed his desk about the Abyssinian, the private employee he has tailing Ran has said nothing in recent weeks and something in him goes cold at the thought. He does not dwell on the thought that Ken-kun, who has not contacted him since coming to prison, has been going to Aya for counsel. He's gone to considerable trouble to do so, Persia realizes, as Ken describes their odd little network of contacts and passworded message service accounts, the sudden all encompassing silence from New York and his concerns that something may have happened. Persia hears the subtext, the silent 'I wouldn't be calling, but you have the resources to do something about this' that echoes in every hushed word, and so he does not feel any satisfaction when soon enough Ken is calling him instead, checking for updates, threatening to leave prison to start his own investigation if Persia doesn't find some information soon. Ken thinks he's sitting on his hands. Persia can't imagine how little faith his friend must have in him to think that he would abandon Ran, of all people, the one he loves most in this world. He hasn't abandoned anyone save perhaps himself, much as Honjou-san is forever insisting otherwise. He has become Persia in every sense of the word, the demands of office eclipsing Omi and Mamoru's sensibilities both, and the only things he has left for himself are his secrets, knowing that his dearest friends are out there somewhere, safe from the crushing oppression of their stations inside the Kritiker machine. He has tried to keep abreast of Ran's activities, knows Ken's recent indulgences enough to recite the outcome of every game his little impromptu prison soccer club has played, gave into temptation to visit with the man calling himself Itou Ryou and spends several nights a week in his new friend's company, soothing the ghost of Kudou Yohji within when the restlessness threatens to shatter his newfound peaceful life. He wants nothing more than to drown in them, their joy and their pain, to soothe their hurts and devote himself to careless affection in their wake, but any hope of their freedom from this place lies in his imprisonment in it. He must stand before the beasts in the darkness and lead them away from his friends with pretty words, lie to everyone they once knew and trusted to preserve their last bid for happiness. No one is happy inside Kritiker. He knows Rex is concerned, sensing his reticence though she has no idea of the depth of his betrayal, the whole of Schwartz on his private payroll now for all that they are still freelance and will never consent to anything else. Naoe Nagi has cleaned up more of Persia's messes since the destruction of Koua Academy than even Honjou-san's Crashers, and he finds he trusts the telekinetic if only because Nagi-kun despises his grandfather with a blinding passion that eliminates any hope of a conflict of loyalties. Persia is careful to keep abreast of Tot's rather expensive psychological treatment for his new ally, a weakness that has yet to be exploited but is kept out in the open just in case. Oji-sama suspects something is amiss, he imagines, but there is no proof, and the great folly of the Takatori clan is that this kind of backbiting is almost actively encouraged and admired. Persia has no idea what Ran would say if he were here, for all that Honjou-san seems so certain, but it does not matter now. This is all done in Ran's name, for his benefit, and that is enough to steady Persia through the worst of it. He's not expecting the call when it comes. Which is stupid, in hindsight. He's only been bracing himself since that first frantic night, since Ken-kun started calling again and their arguments have been morphing into something more cutting. He knows news will come soon, and he knows it will come on this line, the one that never blocks calls even when Rex has all but torn every switchboard in the building out of the walls at his requests for privacy, the one that only his closest confidantes know how to reach. Yohji doesn't remember, Aya is missing and he is here, so that leaves either Nagi -- who has been sent to New York with Crawford in his stead -- or Ken-kun. He's not sure he can stand to hear what either of them has to say. He dutifully picks up the phone anyway, calling out a greeting and is quickly irritated when he's met with silence on the other end. "Ken-kun," he scolds, rubbing at the rapidly forming knot between his eyes, "Now is really not a good time, okay? You can yell at me later." More silence, and he's almost concerned. "Ken? ...Did something happen?" "...Omi?" The voice is deeper than Ken's, once commanding but now strangely hesitant. Persia can hardly believe what he is hearing. "Ran?" Another pause and then, "It's me." He lets out a breath, tries to stifle the urge to laugh hysterically, screws his eyes shut and drops his face into his hands, cradling the phone close with a shoulder. Something inside him unclenches and it surprises him that he hadn't felt the pain until it was gone, the weight until it was lifted. Ran is alive. "You promise?" he finds himself asking, and it's a stupid question but a sense of surrealism has taken over the situation and he's not sure if he trusts himself. "Of course," Ran snaps. His usual gruffness is back, more comforting than cutting, and Persia allows himself a little laugh as he insists, "It's only been a few weeks." Since he fell off the radar, and Persia wants to roll his eyes at the shamelessness with which Ran admits to out-maneuvering him, knowing that he is watched and that Persia would be fretting with Ran's disappearance. Knowing exactly how far Kritiker's capabilities to observe him extend, and that -- wherever he was -- he had gone beyond them for a time. "One month, two weeks and six days, to be exact," Persia corrects, sighing into the phone, "Ken-kun's been rather... frantic." "Ken doesn't get frantic, he gets angry," says Ran, "At you, I'm assuming. I apologize for that." "It's alright," Persia says, tries not to choke on the formalness of Ran's speech and that didn't used to be there, hanging between them, "I'm used to being threatened on a daily basis." "And you?" Ran asks, hesitant again, "How did you feel about it?" "I tried not to think about it too hard," Persia responds, and he's not sure what Ran is asking, knows that there's a right answer in there somewhere but it's beyond him to decipher Aya-speak any longer. "Unfortunately, Kritiker depends a little too much on 'Persia' to keep it afloat." "Omi." "What?" Ran sighs. "When's the last time someone's reminded you that you're still our Omi?" "I don't know," Persia says, and he's surprised to find that he's smiling, shifting to cradle the phone more closely, "When's the last time we talked?" It takes him a moment to remember, expecting something beyond that last night together, when Ran dragged himself home from an abortive attempt at consoling Ken and just... grabbed him, dragged him to the bedroom and literally had his way with him for over an hour before he remembered to pause and break the news that he was leaving. It seemed unnecessarily cruel in hindsight, but Persia had never been able to deny his lover anything and given what he had done... he'd been so surprised that Ran could stand to touch him at all he hadn't kicked up much protest, desperate to cling to what few hours they had left before he woke alone in the vain hope that perhaps the memory could sustain him. It couldn't. Not when a mere mention of Ran still made him flinch, a tinny voice on the other end of a phone line half a world away could make him ache like this. "I--" he begins, starts to think up some mollification, some excuse for why it's alright that they haven't spoken since then, but in the end all that comes out is a stuttered, "I miss you." He's surprised when Ran readily replies, "I miss you too." "Really?" he asks, trying not to let the hope curl into his voice too thoroughly lest Ran think him childish, "You haven't been cursing my name?" "Just the one," Ran says, almost sulkily and that makes Persia laugh, "And only sporadically. Doesn't mean I don't miss you." He barely manages to bite back a retort about how leaving him and refusing to come back pretty much implied otherwise, but he knows he hasn't the right. He also knows that it would end the conversation, and Ran hasn't told him where he is yet, Ken would be furious and he would spend the rest of however long it took Nagi and Crawford to stumble onto the Abyssinian sick with worry that he'd gone and made the whole thing worse. Loving Ran has always been like talking down a spooked horse -- it didn't matter who was right, who started the fight. It mattered that to deal with him meant always keeping in mind that the wrong comment would send him running, off beyond reach and possibly into danger. Persia could never stand to be the one who sent him off into one of his downward spirals. "I... I'm glad," he stutters. I thought you hated me. But then what does that really matter, when hatred and love and obsession are all mixed up together in the mess their families have made of their lives? Ran hates what Mamoru has become, embracing the Takatori name, but he is in love with Omi's gentleness, his willingness to serve and Persia, who is both, who feels both and knows they are not so easily separated, aches for him. Aches for the loss of his innocence and yet revels in it all the same, that the monster inside of Fujimiya Ran looks at him and sees, every ugly part of what he has become and still... they are speaking to one another. Ran has returned at least in this small way because he can't not, can't really leave as much as he claims to hate everything Kritiker has come to stand for. Persia is obsessed, he knows. He takes comfort in the fact that so is Ran. The silence stretches, and Persia isn't willing to waste this opportunity being awkward. He hasn’t been that charming in a long time. "Don't take this the wrong way, but... why are you calling? I figure you wouldn't want to speak to me again anytime soon, if ever." "Given up on me?" Ran asks, and there's a wistfulness there that demands honesty, however ugly. "You did leave," Persia says, and is proud of himself when it comes out without accusation. "And now," Ran says, pausing to take an audibly deep breath, "Now I think I'd like to come home. If that's okay." It's not like him to be hesitant, but something in Persia lurches at that, at the weakness in his lover's voice and where in the hell did that come from? It doesn't really matter, he supposes, not with Ran speaking and stuttering and laughing, wanting to come back and calling it home. He hasn't made any real promises, but still -- It's almost enough to make Persia pinch himself to see if this is real, but he stops himself before he actually gives in to that childish whim. He knows the answer, anyway. His dreams are never this comforting. "I'll be on the next flight," he manages, voice croaking and hesitant. Because he can't sit around waiting and risk that Ran might change his mind, he has to go to him, to see. Ran chuckles, and Persia imagines there's relief there, at having that final awkwardness out of the way because he found the opening and said what he needed to. "You don't even know where I am." Persia smiles. "Then why don't you enlighten me so I can get out there already?" ------- He's considering killing Ran when he enters the hospital, after his lover allows him to stutter his way through an entirely awkward conversation only to add, at the very last second the most crucial information. That he's been stabbed, laid out and in surgery three times to fix the damage in intervening weeks is an unimportant little afterthought to Ran, who apparently got enough of what he needed out of the conversation not to so much as flinch when the news is enough to send Persia into a panic. He clings to that terror all the way from Tokyo to New York, an anchor to keep him from worrying about other things, like what he will say to his lover when he's not really sure Ran wants him so much as he wants to be taken care of. He busies himself with inanities, rearranging his meetings for the next few days, leaving a perfunctory message for Ken before the plane takes off, something caustic about Ran almost losing a kidney that he thinks will make his friend laugh and probably send back a more virulent threat about what will happen to Ran if he ever pulls a stunt this stupid again -- please excuse the blatant and uncaring hypocrisy -- than Persia himself could think up in a million years. It's almost a comforting thought. So by the time he's standing outside Ran's hospital room with a very relieved nurse who's chattering about Mr. Fujimiya's injuries and oh, she's so glad he's finally got a visitor, he just seems so lonely... he's embarrassed to find himself smoothing hands over his suit jacket, straightening his cravat and absently finger combing his hair like a sixteen year getting ready to take a date to a dance. It's amazing what Ran can reduce him to, even when these things are the last things Ran himself has ever cared about, but somehow the magnitude of this reunion, the one he'd nearly given up hoping for, hits him at once. He forgets the nurse when he enters, tunes out her chatter as she checks monitors and straightens the sheets around his lover the instant his gaze hits that familiar, flame-red hair, longer now and brushing Ran's shoulders in jagged edges where it's grown out from his impromptu pre-mission haircut. He looks thin, wan, entirely too small in his blue flowered hospital gown, swallowed by the medical bed where he sits engrossed in a book and it seems wrong somehow, the Abyssinian reduced to something so frail, so human. Ran looks up and reaches out a hand. "Omi." He takes it, draws closer, tries not to think too hard about the little half-smile Ran is wearing that adds a possessive my in front of the name, violet eyes sparking with something unidentifiable he's afraid to label as he helps the nurse take down the guardrail on the side of the bed and perches on its edge. As the woman leaves with a final warning not to wear Ran out too much. The ensuing silence is oppressive though he can't seem to stop smiling, squeezing the too-thin fingers in his and running scenarios through his head on how best to quickly remedy that. He wants to fawn over his lover, rearrange his slightly crooked pillows and do something about the tangle his hair is matted into, run his fingers across that proud brow to erase the knot growing deeper the longer they stare at each other, locked in some shared act of decorum. He wants so badly to kiss the man in front of him it's almost painful, and he's not sure it would be welcome or even... "Omi," Ran snaps, hand squeezing tightly, "Stop it. Stop looking at me like that. Just... let go." He doesn't have to strain to hear the silent, 'Be you again,' with Ran giving him that look, the one he wears whenever he's being petulant about the changes time has wrought. He once said that Persia would always be Tsukiyono Omi to him, and Persia has found that he was not kidding, he refuses to use another name unless the issue is forced in much the same way that Persia always insisted on calling him Aya long after his sister was awake and whole again, as if somehow through clinging to those old names they could reverse the hands of time and recapture the simple happiness they had found in each other during their days at the Koneko. Omi has had enough, giving in and leaning forward with a little mewl, amused as Aya's head rises and tips to meet him, find his lips. This has always been easy, they've always known just how to move, it's not long before he feels Aya's hands clench against the fabric of his overcoat as he suckles at his lover's bottom lip until it parts from the other, tongue darting out to stroke along his own. He can't seem to stop touching now that permission has been given, tracing both hands down from Aya's temples to his cheeks, along the straining tendons in his neck and down to dip below the scooping collar of his hospital gown before he gives up and simply clutches Aya to him, coming to clasp beneath him, around his waist-- --which is enough to make him flinch when his injury is jarred. "Sorry!" Omi chirps, high pitched and panicked as he draws quickly away, hands fluttering, "Should I get a nurse or something? I just... oh that had to hurt..." Aya kisses him again. "There you are," says Aya, and there's a sparkle of humor in his eyes. "You are such a jerk," Omi chastises, narrowing his eyes in mock anger and trying not to flinch as Aya's hands insinuate themselves beneath his coat and suit jacket, begin to worm their way into his dress shirt, "You're not happy unless I'm waving my arms around, and here I am all concerned for you..." "It's an honest reaction," comes the reply, and he jerks a little as air hits his skin where Aya's successfully gotten his coat open and his shirt untucked from his slacks. "I have this thing for honestly, these days." His mouth leaves a wet patch between Omi's collarbones. "It's sexy." "Why are you torturing me?" Omi whines, as Aya latches onto a particularly sensitive spot below his jaw, "We're in public. You're hurt. That nice nurse will probably have a heart attack if she wanders in and you're still -- Oh!" Aya chuckles and stops abruptly, leaning back against his pillows with far too smug an expression as he leaves Omi to straighten out his clothes. "I was going to try and find a polite way to ask where we stand," Omi says wryly, "But I think you just answered my question." "I like to be clear," Aya says, and he's so straight faced, Omi has to laugh, "Obfuscating is a waste of time." Omi supposes that he should be questioning this, the disparately hot and cold reactions he elicits in his lover, angry and frigid one moment and solicitous the next, but it has always been this way. When Aya wants him, it's all he can do not to drown in him, in caresses and attentions and all the stupid little debates they have about honor and truth and flower arranging. When he doesn't -- there is nothing. Stony silence and the sentence of waking up alone for as long as Aya sees fit to make his point, to work off his anger to a point where he can stand to be with Omi again. It's never perfect, there are always stupid petty disagreements and giant chasms of misunderstanding that never seem to go away, but it's the one real thing in Omi's life, visceral and painful and wonderful all at once. He's learned to enjoy it while he can. Before he screws it up again. "Stop it," Aya says, brows beginning to furrow again. "Stop what?" "Worrying," says Aya, "About everything. I wouldn't have called you if I wasn't serious." "You're always serious, Aya," Omi says, tossing his overcoat and jacket aside, stretching out and propping himself up on an elbow to look down at Aya, "That can very easily translate into very seriously pissed at me. But... I get it. I do, and really, thank you. I know I don't deserve another chance--" "Recriminations are a waste of time, too." Omi rolls his eyes. "Okay, our issues are taboo for now. Am I allowed to ask what manner of villain got the jump on you long enough to do this much damage? Ken-kun's going to want to know." Aya grimaces. "Would you believe it was a nine year old?" "No." "Well it was," Aya huffs, crossing his arms. "At least I think it was. I didn't get that close a look before he ran off." It's wrong that he manages to look stately in his affront, and Omi isn't certain whether to laugh again or gape in horror at the mental image. To use a child that young... ...not even the Takatori would stoop that low. "A child?" "I was minding my own business walking down the street, and this kid bumped into me. Took a few moments for the shock to wear off before I realized I was even bleeding, and the damn brat left the knife in my gut." "They didn't say anything when I came in about it," Omi says, horror dawning and if they think he won't kick up a fuss, give these people a piece of his mind, even without the fear of the Takatori name ground in the first instant he walked through the door -- "They don't know," Aya says, "I told them it was a kitchen accident. I'm foreign enough that they think I'm an idiot anyway." He doesn't know what to say to that. "It was just a kid," Aya insists, reaching out to take his hand again. "Not even old enough to realize what he'd done." There's more to the story, Omi knows, facets to the tale that Aya isn't telling him for whatever reason and frankly he's not sure he cares. The cruelty of using a child against Aya when it has always been one of the few things to give the Abyssinian pause pales in comparison to the relief Omi feels at knowing he can finally take the man home again, into his protection. Away from this place and whatever power had tried to destroy him. "We'll have to tell everyone when you return," he says, trying not to let his dismay show on his face as he says what he is afraid will make Aya want to disappear again, "I can't hide you in Japan," He pauses, frowns. "Honjou-san is very upset that I let you die." Aya shakes his head. "Yuushi was always melodramatic. And he doesn't like you. Don't tell me you've actually been listening to him?" "It's hard not to with all the shouting, unfortunately," he admits. "Can you handle that? Going public again?" "I have no illusions that I've escaped anything coming here," Aya says, expression hardening, "I will always be Weiss, it doesn't matter what the trappings look like. I'm wasting my time sticking my nose into foreign turf wars when I should be by your side." Omi wants to think that's Aya's attempt at romance, but he recognizes the unspoken 'keeping you from screwing things up' immediately. He's more relieved than angry, he's been free floating without a moral compass since Aya's departure, and that is dangerous inside the bowels of Kritiker, where logic and reason are twisted to excuse a thousand sins at every turn. "Will you stand beside me when I'm forced to machinate? Lie? Murder for an ideal you may not share any longer?" "I will be there to make sure we both understand what we're fighting for," Aya says, "And that it's worthwhile. Your grandfather is too twisted to care any longer." "I know. I'm just not sure there's anything to be done about it," Omi answers, falling to the pillows beside Aya, watching the weak fluorescent light refract blues and indigo in his eyes, "I can't see the truth beneath the haze of lies anymore. Will you help me?" "Will you hear a damn word I say this time?" "I promise to try," Omi says, because it's the only consolation he can offer. "Then I will stay with you as long as you can keep that promise," Aya replies, "I can't seem to stay away that long, anyway." Omi smiles. "At least with me you get to have a lot of sex?" Aya snorts at that, "The injury's not that bad, you know." "When we check you out of the hospital I promise not to go easy on you," Omi says, and it's almost like things have gone back to normal, before Generation Four went active and they were separated for months on end, with actual time to spend laying about talking and contemplating things to come, together. "Though really, Aya, no visitors at all? With your friendly and welcoming personality?" Aya turns away, staring at the ceiling. "Actually," he says, hesitant at first before his words pick up speed, "I've been talking to Sena a lot recently. He's become a better listener." He slants a narrow-eyed glance Omi's way, waiting. Omi understands, this is his declaration that he is allowed to talk about this, that the confrontation they never had about the events of that last mission and its horrible, far reaching consequences is still to come and Aya intends to have it out well and good before they're done. He doesn't mind, not really. Not if it means he is allowed to have Aya at his side again. Everything else will fall into place if he has to force it. return to splash page