[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 54 ~The Message~
Title: The Things We Can't Control
Author:
prettyorianna
Pairing: Akame. Others to be added later.
Rating: NC-17.
Genre: crime drama au
Beta by: my cat Gemma. okay, seriously, nobody
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my
plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Two criminals with vastly different styles meet by chance one day. They immediately clash but is that all they'll ever be? How much is fate and how much choice? And how will their meeting change the world around them?
Author's Note: Well, it's not as long as the other recent chapters but it is very eventful in its way. Oh, and please don't kill me.
BANNER BY DESHISORABA!! THE MOST AWESOME BANNER EVER AND I WILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO DISAGREES!
Warning: This gets graphic often occasionally, containing at the very least foul language, character death, nefarious crimes, rape, etc etc.
The Master Posts:
On my journal - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_ Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the je_kamenashi Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the kattun_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the jin_fics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
Chapter 54 ~The Message~
The end of July was fast approaching. For the most part, Kame was moving easier but he was pretty sure he’d cracked or at least bruised some ribs on his left side and they still hurt like hell, even ten days later. But he just had to hope they would heal on their own because he couldn’t go to the hospital.
He went by the boxing gym. He was too sore to really fight and the walk took a lot longer than usual but it was the best way to find out what was going on in the world. The place was one big gossip sinkhole. Seriously, they were just like a bunch of little old ladies at times. Since the apartment didn’t have a television it really was his only way to get news. He wanted to find out how things were going with the twins and their plea change.
When the owner of the place saw the way Kame was moving, he raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Kame was sure they’d all be talking about him once he left but they had the decency to at least not pester him about who beat him up. Thank goodness, because he didn’t want to try to explain about Jiro and the… well, he still wasn’t sure what those pills were that Jiro forced on him.
He wished… he wished there was something he could do for that boy, the one that brought him his Snoopy doll in the alley. That kid was too sweet for that area and he didn’t seem to be a junkie. God only knows what he was doing there!
But there wasn’t much he could do other than offer a silent prayer on his behalf, that whatever was happening to him wasn’t going to be too bad.
Kame asked the gym owner about the twins’ trial. Apparently the sudden decision to change their plea hadn’t surprised anyone since it was common knowledge the trial was going badly for them. What had shocked everyone was that they’d done so without even trying to bargain a better deal. They’d just plead guilty and said they’d accept whatever punishment the system saw fit to give them.
“Always suspected something funny about those guys…” the gym owner added, though Kame knew that was a complete lie. Everyone had liked them… until they got arrested. Then, suddenly, everyone turned on them, like they’d never trusted them in the first place. At first it had really pissed Kame off but he was used to it and there wasn’t any real point to calling the man out over it.
Even the club members who went to the same boxing gym were acting like that. It broke Kame’s heart. The looks they gave him were judgmental or, worse, pitying. Apparently the new opinion wasn’t that Kame was the twin’s untouchable pet; it was that he was the twins-only-touchable pet. Nobody would believe he wasn’t sleeping with them, not anymore. It seemed like some people blamed him for the twins’ arrest, judging him their unpunished partner. Others seemed to think he was a victim like the boys on trial who just wasn’t brave enough to stand up for himself.
Kame decided he rather preferred the first to the second. He wasn’t a victim anymore. He had the twins to thank for that, no matter how everyone else viewed them now.
He would never forget that.
“…fifteen years is too good for their crimes, if you ask me!” the gym owner was still talking. Kame had sort of tuned him out when he had seen some of the former club members staring at him but at the mention of fifteen years his attention snapped back to the man.
“They got fifteen years? You’re sure? Fifteen years?” he cried out, a bit louder than he meant to.
“Yeah, I know, right? I guess that’s the most they could give them.”
Frowning, Kame responded with, “Yeah, I guess…”
The damn gym owner though he was upset over how light the sentence was. You know what? Fuck the boxing gym and its owner and all the club members who turned on the twins! Fuck every last one of them! He was never coming back. He’d get his news somewhere else.
He stormed out, to the surprise of pretty much everyone there.
But he didn’t go back home. Not yet. He had one more thing he had to do. He had to go back. He had to go to The Club and make his peace with everything that had happened. That place… it was a symbolic. It… it represented a turning point in his life and he needed to see. He needed to stand there in that place and ask for forgiveness for everything. It didn’t matter that nobody would be there to hear what he had to say. It… it was just something he had to do to really move on.
It was too far to walk and besides, the walk to the boxing gym had already really worn him out. His left side had borne the brunt of the attack and it still hurt like hell despite the ibuprofen he took before he left that morning.
After what happened last time he tried to drive (actually, he wasn’t completely sure what had happened; he must have crashed Komatsu’s car but he had no memory of it even now), he wasn’t about to try to drive there. Instead, he took a bus back to the transit station so he could find the right bus to take him as close as possible (he also took note of what route he’d have to take back to the twins so he wouldn’t have to come all the way back to the main station just to find the bus home).
The closest stop to the club’s location was two blocks north and three west. Not so bad a walk, he supposed.
As soon as he turned onto Lexus Avenue from third street, he saw the crowd gathered outside The Club. What in the hell was going on? Who were these people? What were they…
He hurried south down Lexus until he reached the back of the crowd.
All but grabbing the nearest person, he asked, “What’s going on? What… what is this?”
The man turned to him and smiled, “We’re going to send a message to those boy-raping perverts!” he said fiercely. The look in the guy’s eyes was scary. Possessed.
“What? What message?”
But the man didn’t answer, because someone from the front of the crowd started talking and the voice was chillingly familiar.
“It’s time we sent a message. Not just to those two sick, twisted men that hurt so many of our children! No, we have to make ourselves heard, all our voices united as one, to say, ‘no more!’ We’ll route out every last one of their kind in our city! We’ll protect the innocence of our precious sons and daughters! Stand with me now and we’ll give them a message they’ll never forget! Let’s purify this place, so that no other boys will ever suffer here like those twelve brave boys who stood against those monsters in that courtroom!”
As the words were spoken, Kame edged his way around the crowd so he could see what was happening and could see the owner of the voice.
He watched as his father stirred the crowd and faster than Kame would have thought possible, the place was on fire. It was burning so quickly! He could feel the heat even from as far away as he was. “NO!” he shouted but nobody could hear him, not over the roar of the fire and the sounds from the incensed crowd.
“No… oh, god, no…” he cried as he sank to his knees. How… how could this happen? How could these people DO that? Just burn it all down? Where were the cops? Why wasn’t someone stopping this? “Please, this isn’t happening…” he whispered. “Tell me this isn’t happening…”
He looked to his father and their eyes locked… his two to his father’s one. As they stared at each other across the distance, Kame got the his real message loud and clear:
I will hound you for the rest of your life. I will tear down everything you love and utterly destroy anyone who ever tries to help you… and there’s nothing you can do about it. This is your punishment for daring to cross me.
The man looked so pleased with himself.
Even though the flames were burning hotter and hotter as the minutes passed, enough so that the crowd had to back away, Kame just felt cold. So very, very cold.
And Kame’s father just walked away, humming happily.
++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 55 ~Unexpected Outcomes~
A/N: Damn you, Papa K!
He wants Kame back but with the crowd there, he can't get him because he can't afford to have Kame start shouting accusations at him in front of those people. So in the meanwhile, he's just going to terrorize him, I suppose. At least he has no idea where the twins' apartment is and they've really covered their tracks well on that.
I have been utterly unable to find a consistent account of how long the jail sentence is for the crimes the twins plead guilty to. So I picked a number out of a hat, pretty much. Long enough they'll still be in jail in the present!chapters (that's why you haven't seen them... yet... because I didn't want you guys to know but now you do). But yeah, for those who actually know the law better, if my number is wildly inaccurate, please, just go with it? Willing suspension of disbelief, as the hubby likes to say to stupid movies.