Something Me In You p.1
It was supposed to be just a routine mission.
The target was nobody special, just a local drug dealer and flesh merchant with aspirations. His only claim to fame, that had brought him to Kritiker’s notice, was the fact that he’d managed to collect a significant amount of blackmail information on a number of politicians, due to their patronage of his services. The man was getting close to having enough influence to cause problems, so Persia had sent Weiss in to take the man down.
They hadn’t known the night of their attack would coincide with the man’s first meeting with the representatives of a potential new ally: Reiji Takatori.
Yohji cursed softly to himself, gathering sharp wire in his gloved hands as he ran. That psycho German was on his tail, and there was no way he was outrunning Schuldig. All he could do was try and prepare himself to attack when the red-haired Schwarz member overtook him, and try not to think about what he was doing. Thinking about it would pretty much negate the purpose where Schuldig was concerned.
So Yohji ran across the rooftops of the warehouses, stretching his long legs and leading Schuldig on a merry chase, while he concentrated on his footing and let his hands slide the wire from his watch instinctively. By the time the familiar, irritating chuckle sounded from a few feet behind him, Yohji was as prepared as he could be.
He pushed off from the roof with his next step, spinning in midair to land facing Schuldig. The redhead stopped also, facing him with a wide grin on his face.
How can he not even be winded? Yohji wondered irritably. I know he smokes as much as I do. His own chest was heaving from the exertion, his lungs working themselves up to a debilitating coughing fit if he waited too long.
He didn’t wait. If he stopped to think about what he was doing, Schuldig would know.
He flung the wire out by instinct, and from the sudden gasp and harsh German exclamation, guessed that he’d taken the telepath by surprise. Schuldig tried to dodge the flying wire, but even his speed wasn’t sufficient to the task without that moment of warning he usually got from his power. Yohji smiled grimly to himself. That was Schuldig’s weakness, as he had thought. The man relied too much on his mental power to let him know his opponent’s plans. Crawford used his power similarly, but there was no way around Crawford’s precognitive ability, really. He knew what you were going to do before you did. But Schuldig couldn’t know what you were planning until you thought about it, and then he relied on his speed and reflexes to avoid the attack.
If you caught him by surprise, though, speed wasn’t enough. He just didn’t have the skill to read someone’s moves from their body language instead of their thoughts. He’d never had to develop it.
"Clever, Kudo," Schuldig snarled, crouching slightly, ensnared in the twists of Yohji’s wire. Unfortunately, he hadn’t managed to get a loop around Schuldig’s throat, so he couldn’t strangle him. He could hurt him, though. Yohji gave the wire an experimental tug, watching Schuldig wince as the sharp metal cut through cloth to the tender flesh beneath. Patches of dark blood began to appear on the German’s clothes. Schuldig hissed at him, taking a quick step forward to release the tension on the wire.
"Ah, ah, Schuldig," Yohji cautioned lightly, yanking harder on the wire and drawing a grunt of pain from the German. "You’re fast, but not fast enough to get to me before I slice you to ribbons," he asserted with a smug smile. Schuldig growled at him, muttering under his breath in German.
The standoff held for a few moments, both of them staring at each other. Yohji kept his mind a careful blank, guessing it would piss Schuldig off further.
Finally, the German grew tired of their staring match and snapped, "All right, you caught me, but how do you propose to hold onto me?" Yohji frowned at the question, tightening his grip on the wire slightly as a feral grin spread across Schuldig’s face. That expression made Yohji suddenly very nervous. He wished the rest of Weiss would hurry up and give him some backup.
"They’re busy," Schuldig purred, and Yohji cursed himself for breaking his mental silence. Schuldig snorted, apparently in reply to Yohji’s thoughts. "Mental silence," the German sneered, confirming that theory. "As if there were such a thing. You can keep the surface calm, but all I have to do is hold my breath," the German spoke softly, grinning disturbingly again, "and dive down deeper." Schuldig’s eyes flared strangely in the darkness, reflective like a cat’s, and suddenly Yohji knew he was no longer alone in his head.
He stumbled backward a few steps, shuddering at the bizarre sensation of being mentally violated. He could feel Schuldig, a malevolent presence in his mind, sifting through memories and peering into darkened corners and behind walls that had been erected for good reasons.
There was no defense against this. There was no way to keep Schuldig out, no way to get him out now that he’d entered. Schuldig’s shadow presence expanded behind Yohji’s eyes, spreading through his very being.
Schuldig smiled broadly at him.
Yohji felt his hand begin to loosen its grip on the wire. He stared down at it in horror, but…there was nothing he could do. He was no longer in control. Gritting his teeth, Yohji tried to rally his strength, his mind, and regain control, force the intruder out.
Schuldig chuckled softly. "You thought you’d caught me in your web of wires, didn’t you, white hunter? But your thoughts flutter like the wings of a trapped moth against my mind. You cannot escape me, Yohji. I am inside you," Schuldig whispered, green eyes gleaming in the shadows.
Yohji heard the words and cursed silently to himself, hearing Schuldig’s laughter echo in his thoughts.
And then, he felt a sudden searing pain in his gut.
He screamed at the shock, vaguely noting that Schuldig echoed the scream, but too preoccupied with the sight of the bloody blade protruding from his stomach to wonder why. He stared in horror as blood flowed quickly from the wound, running in thick dark trails across the pale flesh of his bared stomach. His knees wobbled and gave out, and he collapsed to the roof, moaning in agony. The pain was incredible, unbearable, but then he felt a sudden wrenching, tearing sensation, and the knife was ripped back out of his body.
He choked on blood and agony, and darkness washed up from the depths of his mind and carried him away to oblivion.
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Schuldig was on his knees, panting and moaning, when Crawford arrived a few moments later. Having foreseen this, though not the reason why, Crawford simply snapped at Farferello, "Cut him loose and let’s go."
Farferello scowled up at Crawford from his position crouched beside the crumpled body of Yohji Kudo, a pool of blood spreading darker shadows around the Weiss assassin. Farferello slowly licked Kudo’s blood from his knife, watching Crawford with his single golden eye. Crawford glared back at the deranged Irishman.
"Cut Schuldig loose," Crawford ordered again, his voice tight with impatience as he mentally tracked the rapidly increasing possibility that Weiss would arrive before they were gone. Nagi was out cold in the car, where Crawford had left him after foreseeing that Schuldig would be having some sort of difficulty here. The German had chased Kudo several blocks away from the scene of the meeting Weiss had interrupted. The obnoxious little piece of gutter trash Takatori had come to size up had been killed, which to Crawford’s mind was just as well. The man had been scum. Takatori had only agreed to the meet to discover if the man was worth the trouble of forcing into service, or if he should just be eliminated. If Weiss hadn’t taken the small-time crime lord out, Schwarz probably would have gotten the job tomorrow. They’d managed to salvage most of the incriminating photo collection, though, so at least there was a small success for the evening.
Crawford hadn’t foreseen Weiss’ arrival this evening, though, and that irritated him. The encounter had gotten messy, leaving Nagi drained and exhausted, and now Schuldig suffering from some unknown difficulty. Maybe some of Kudo’s wires had penetrated deeper than skin. Crawford wasn’t sure, but he did know that if Farferello sat there licking the damn knife much longer, Weiss would show up.
He briefly considered shooting Schuldig and leaving the corpse, but the German, irritating as he could be, was the second strongest member of Schwarz. Nagi was just too young, and Farferello was too unstable. Schuldig wasn’t all there either, but he could usually be relied upon to get the job done.
Usually.
Snarling, Crawford grabbed the bloody knife from Farferello’s hand and stepped over to Schuldig’s crumpled form. The red-haired man was curled in a fetal ball, whimpering like a baby in the darkness. Crawford frowned distastefully at the display, but efficiently slashed through the wires binding Schuldig’s limbs. He tossed the knife back to Farferello and stood, heaving Schuldig’s long body over his shoulder. For all his height, at least the German was light. Crawford grabbed Farferello’s collar with his free hand and moved off into the shadows, somehow maintaining a certain feline grace in his movements despite one barely conscious teammate slung over his shoulder, and another being dragged, cursing creatively in English, behind him.
By the time the other members of Weiss arrived on the darkened rooftop, Schwarz was gone.
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Ken hung up his apron and shoved a hand through his hair, sighing heavily.
"Where are you going? Your shift isn’t over," Aya remarked flatly, glancing up from an arrangement he was working on. Ken scowled at the red-haired man, brown eyes flashing angrily at the challenge.
"I’m going to the hospital," Ken snapped. "To check on Yohji," he added pointedly.
Aya’s violet eyes narrowed slightly at the implied reprimand, but then he simply shrugged and turned back to the arrangement. Ken cursed softly under his breath and slammed out of the shop, not even bothering to hunt Omi down in the back to tell him he was leaving.
Damn Aya. Why did he have to be so cold? When they’d tracked Yohji down last night, finally resorting to using his headset signal to find him, Aya’s only comment at the sight of their bloody, nearly dead friend had been that Yohji shouldn’t have run so far from the job sight, or they might have heard him scream.
We don’t even know if he screamed, Ken thought, anger fading from his thoughts to be replaced by misery. They knew they’d been right behind Schwarz last night, and Nagi at least was out of the fight, but when they’d found Yohji, any thought of pursuit had evaporated. They’d gotten the blond to a hospital as quickly as they could, but he’d been so pale already, his pulse weak and thready, horribly thick almost-black stomach blood seeping endlessly from the wound…
Ken had carried Yohji, the only one strong enough to manage the awkward burden of the older man’s long body. The blood had soaked his shirt and jacket. When he’d gotten home and stumbled into the bathroom to shower, he’d had to peel the shirt away from his skin. It stung enough to bring tears to his eyes, and that had been enough to open the floodgates. He’d stayed in the shower for an hour, waiting until he finally got his grief under control. All day, he could feel the tears threatening to well up again as he looked around the shop and registered the fact that Yohji wasn’t there.
Might never be there again.
Ken took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to ease the lump that rose in his throat at the thought of Yohji’s life hanging by such a fragile thread. Sure, they sniped at each other a lot, and the older man got on Ken’s nerves with his smoking and womanizing and total devotion to the art of slacking, but still… That was just Yohji. He was like the older brother you couldn’t stand but secretly worshipped.
Ken sighed, staring at the doors of the hospital. He didn’t want to go in. He didn’t want to see Yohji, cool, slick Yohji, lying pale and quiet in a narrow bed, tubes and wires hooked to his body, machines beeping and flashing their artificial life signs…
He walked in. At the reception desk, he told them he was Yohji’s brother. Only family was allowed in intensive care.
It didn’t feel like a lie.
He paused in the doorway, staring at the scene that was every bit as bad as it had been in his mind’s eye. Of course, he’d seen Yohji last night, hooked up to the monitors and IVs. But it was so much worse, somehow, in reality than in memory. Ken stepped into the room and pulled the single uncomfortable chair over beside the bed.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, staring at Yohji’s pale, still features before there was the sound of a cough in the doorway.
"Mr. Kudo," a man’s voice said, and it took Ken a moment to remember that he’d given his name as Ken Kudo the night before, in his charade as Yohji’s brother. It always made the hospital staff happy to have a next of kin on hand. Omi had been too distraught to take on the role and answer all the necessary questions, and Aya, the cold bastard, had refused to even come inside the hospital.
Ken turned to look at the doctor he’d met last night, the one in charge of Yohji’s case. The man gave him a precise, professional doctor smile, the kind that offered comfort but not hope. Ken felt his heart freeze in his chest.
"What’s wrong?" he asked, the words coming out as a harsh whisper. The doctor frowned slightly, apparently disturbed at having his reassuring façade penetrated. Then the smile slid back in place, just a fraction warmer than it had been.
"Mr. Kudo," the doctor repeated slowly, eyes sliding down to scan the chart he held before him, then up to glance at the monitors attached to Yohji. The doctor sighed. "I’m afraid there is no easy way to say this, Mr. Kudo. We believe your brother may be brain dead."
Ken stared at the doctor, not reacting to the words. It couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t be… Not Yohji, not smirking, confident Yohji, not the sly detective always in control of himself and his environment, not the man who made faces at Ken’s hearty breakfasts while he sucked down coffee and cigarette smoke…
"No," Ken denied flatly. "No, he can’t be."
The doctor frowned again, this time probably annoyed at having his word questioned. But he gamely hoisted the smile back in place, adding a hint of condescending concern as he stepped further into the room. "I realize this is a terrible shock, Mr. Kudo, but try to understand. Even though there wasn’t any major damage to his internal organs, there was still so much blood loss…trauma…brain can only survive so long…lack of oxygen…" The doctor’s words seemed to reach Ken dimly down a long, echoing tunnel, only a few of them comprehensible to his willfully deaf ears. No. It wasn’t true. It simply couldn’t be true. Yohji couldn’t be dead…
Yohji couldn’t be dead because Ken had let Farferello slip away, preoccupied by Aya’s fight with Crawford.
The knife wound had gaped open like a black hole in Yohji’s stomach, the unstoppable flow of dark, dark blood at once horrifying and wonderful, an indication that Yohji was still alive, that there was still time…
Ken clenched his fists at the remembered sensation of Yohji’s torn skin beneath his hand as the doctor continued his careful explanation.
"…have been a few unusual signals that might indicate some remnant of higher brain function, but really - "
"What?" Ken demanded, snapped from his painful reverie by the doctor’s reluctant tone.
The doctor frowned. "I said, we have seen a few unusual spikes in brain activity that might indicate some higher brain function, but not enough to indicate - "
"But you saw them," Ken interrupted, grabbing onto this shred of hope with both hands. "There are signs of higher brain function!"
The doctor’s frown deepened and Ken was astonished the man had been so honest as to admit to this possibility that he obviously didn’t want Ken grasping onto. "Only a few occasional spikes," the doctor qualified. "Not enough to be optimistic about survival."
Survival. Not recovery. Recovery isn’t even a consideration, Ken thought grimly. "Is there anyone around here who does think these spikes are enough to be optimistic about?" he asked calmly.
The doctor stared at him blankly. "Dr. Ishihara, but that’s because she’s young and still thinks medicine can work miracles," the doctor replied flatly.
"I see," Ken said softly. He stared at the frowning doctor for a moment. Then he turned to look at Yohji. Without his usual smug expression, the man’s still features were really almost delicate. Charming the ladies even in your sleep, eh, Yohji? Ken thought with weary amusement. "I want Dr. Ishihara on his case," Ken said firmly, still watching Yohji’s pale face.
He heard the doctor’s grunt of irritation, then a long-suffering sigh. "It’ll just be harder when you have to face facts eventually," the doctor warned, but then he simply turned and left the room without further argument.
Ken stayed until visiting hours were over, staring up at the monitors.
He didn’t see any spikes.