[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 88 ~Children's Services~
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. and maeda_marika
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: Sorry it's so late, but I did at least get it finished even if I had to stay up an extra few hours. It's not as long as I'd like but it seemed a good divide point.
BANNER BY going_dangerous!!
Okay, now I have two banners and they're both amazing (oh, and you should see the wallpaper version of this banner.... so nice!), so I will be rotating them out every few chapters. Thanks to both going_dangerous and deshisoraba for my wonderful two banners.
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 88 ~Children's Services~
Yurina was listless the entire trip home from the hospital and once they got home, she still said nothing. She just sat there, staring at nothing. Every attempt to reach her failed miserably. She wouldn’t even look at him. She wasn’t crying anymore but Kame actually would have preferred that to this… this deadness.
It was worse even than the aftermath of her rape. At least then she had kept who she was. She got upset and then she got pissed. That was the Yurina Response to people bringing harm upon her and those she cared about. But there wasn’t the slightest hint of that in her now. When she found out she was pregnant, she broke the bathroom mirror and also didn’t talk for a week… but even that brooding silence was different from how she was now.
Kame cooked dinner because he felt she shouldn’t have to even though she was much better at it. She didn’t even look at him when he tried to hand her a plate. In the end, he had to put plastic wrap over it and put it in the fridge.
Things stayed like that for hours. It wasn’t so much that she was ignoring him as it was that she just wasn’t seeing him. He tried everything he could think of to bring her back to the room but not even threatening to call her brothers got through to her.
Then it was time for bed and she still hadn’t moved from where she first sat.
She couldn’t stay there all night. They both needed sleep if they were going to go to Children’s Services to fight this tomorrow. Eventually he just had to pull her to her feet. Not roughly, mind you, but she didn’t resist it at all. Yurina let him guide her towards the bedroom.
The sight of the crib by the bed finally brought some response to Yurina. Very softly, she murmured, “I have to feed her. She must be so hungry…”
“I’m sure they’ll feed her,” Kame said to her, leading her to the bed.
As she sat down on the edge of the bed, Yurina looked at him - finally! - and said, “It’s not the same thing. It’s not the same thing.”
“Maybe not,” Kame tried to reassure her, “But it’ll keep her well until we go and get her back tomorrow.”
“I don’t think we will. There’s something wrong in all of this.”
“What do you mean?” Not that he disagreed in the slightest.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” was all she said.
That was the same conclusion he’d reached. Kame still couldn’t figure out who had put Children’s Services on this path in the first place. Nobody who had reasonable expectation of knowing not only that she was going to give birth but also that she finally had and at that exact hospital seemed a likely culprit.
But where logic failed to provide an answer, in the pit of his stomach dwelt the irrational but still overwhelmingly heavy feeling that his father was behind it. Another blow from the unspoken promise to destroy everything and everyone he loves.
And that made Kame feel incredibly guilty.
The new tears streaming down Yurina’s face and the despair in her eyes only worsened his guilt.
You know what? Fuck planning.
First thing the next morning he was going to march into the main office of Children’s Services in the city and beat some answers out of everyone there. They’d tell him where to find Marika and he’d bring her home to her mother. He’d fight the employees and the cops and anyone else he had to. He was bringing her home.
“Don’t give up yet, Yuri-chan. We haven’t exhausted our options yet.”
As she curled up on the bed, Yurina said, “I don’t know why but I just… I know. She’s gone…”
“Don’t give up!”
“I’m not.”
“It sounds like you are… You’re just going to let them get away with this? Just roll over and let them take Marika?” He wasn’t saying it to be judgmental. Honestly, he was trying to piss her off. She needed to get pissed off. This… it wasn’t her and if they were going to get Marika back, she needed to find herself.
Just let those people at Children’s Services face a motivated Yurina. They wouldn’t know what hit ‘em.
“Get out.”
“Am I wrong?”
Yurina’s eyes flashed as she pushed herself up to sit. Grabbing the alarm clock off the night stand, she flung it in his general direction. “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY ROOM!”
Kame was barely able to dodge the alarm and it crashed loudly against the wall behind him. It was followed by a hair brush and something small and round, maybe makeup though as far as he’d seen, Yurina didn’t wear much.
“Yuri-chan,” he said as he ducked to avoid another projectile. “Yurina!”
“OUT!” She crossed the room faster than he thought possible, even from her, and he found himself stumbling backwards with the force of the punch. Putting his hand up to his eye, all Kame could think was that she had quite an arm. It fucking hurt, worse than any lumps he’d gotten fighting Yoko on Pearl Street. “OUT! OUT! Out… out…”
Yurina dropped to her knees, sobbing. When he tried to put his arms around her comfortingly, she shoved him away and told him yet again to get out. But he could be stubborn, too, and she didn’t need to be alone.
So he put his arms around her again and she shoved him again and things went back and forth like that for a little while until she finally just let him hold her. She cried herself out again and whispered, “I’m tired…”
“I know…”
After Yurina went to bed, so did Kame.
The next morning, Yurina seemed a bit better. There was a determination in her eyes that she had lacked the night before. They had to pull out a map and make some phone calls to find the Children’s Services main office, but they still made it there by ten in the morning.
The wait in the lobby was long - apparently the place was highly understaffed, so he heard an employee complaining - but eventually they got to sit down with a woman sitting behind a very small desk overflowing with folders and documents. The nameplate said Uno Misako.
Things went wrong almost immediately.
“Paperwork?” the woman asked.
“What paperwork?” Yurina asked in response. “Where’s my daughter?”
The woman gave her an exasperated look. “The paperwork the agent gave you when your child was removed from your care.”
Kame couldn’t remember any paperwork but he missed the first part of everything yesterday at the hospital, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“I don’t have any paperwork,” Yurina said.
“I can’t help you without the paperwork the agent gave you. Come back tomorrow with the paperwork and then-”
“But she didn’t give me anything!” Yurina was getting louder and louder as she spoke. “She just took her!”
Rolling her eyes, the woman at the desk said, “Our agents are required to give you documentation when removing a child from your custody except in circumstances where safety is so much an issue that there isn’t time without seriously endangering the child. What were the circum-”
“There weren’t ANY circumstances to take her at all!” Yurina shouted. “I gave birth to a happy, healthy baby girl and hadn’t even left the hospital yet when you took her.”
The look the woman was giving them now was not encouraging. “This can’t be right. Are you sure it was one of our agents and not a kidnapping? Perhaps you should go to the police.”
“She had a cop with her. He ripped Marika from my arms after she read those disgusting lies and half-truths and irrelevant whatevers from her file and they both left with her...”
“Still, are you s-”
This time it was Kame who interrupted. “The file the woman carried was misleading but full of information, some of which I doubt a kidnapper would have. I didn’t see what was in the file but she consulted it several times during the conversation.”
“Fine. What’s your name?” the woman turned slightly so she was facing the computer.
“Kumai. Kumai Yurina.”
As Yurina spoke, the woman started typing. It didn’t take long. “We don’t have you in our system. Maybe it’s under the father’s name. What’s your name?” She was addressing him, oddly enough.
“What?” Kame asked, confused.
“Your name?”
“Why would you want my name?” he asked. Wait… did she think he was the father? “I’m not the father. I’m a sort-of brother.”
“Oh. Well, either way, what’s the father’s name?” the woman asked, tapping the desk impatiently.
It took Yurina a moment to respond despite the woman’s impatience. “I have no idea…”
“Then it wouldn’t be under his name. Look, miss, I’m sorry but there’s absolutely no record on you or your daughter in our system.”
“But… how…?” Yurina sounded lost.
Yet another bit that didn’t make sense. There really was something wrong in all of this other than the general injustice of it all. “What if the woman just hasn’t had time to put it into the computer yet? Maybe it’s sitting on a desk like this somewhere?”
“No, that’s not possible,” the woman responded. “The result of her visit might not be entered yet but the file is in the computer well in advance of that. Removing a child is one of the last steps in the process and everything up to that point, every bit of research, every action taken, it’s all entered in the computer. There’s no way an agent would remove a child when there isn’t even a file in the system.”
“But she took her! She took my little girl! Where is she? What have you done with her? I WANT HER BACK! YOU TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!!” and Yurina was pushing to her feet, pounding her fists on the cluttered desk. “YOU HAD NO RIGHT TO TAKE HER! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG!”
The woman pushed a button on the phone on her desk and said, “I need someone from security.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Kame quickly said, pulling Yurina back down to sit. Yurina didn’t want to sit, though, and it really seemed like she would make a scene. It’s originally what he thought was necessary but the fact that the records weren’t in the computer had changed the requirements of the situation drastically. “Yuri-chan, please, just go outside for a minute, get some fresh air. I’ll try to sort this out, okay?”
“I’m not leaving without my Marika-chan…”
Kame shook his head. “I didn’t say leave. I said get some fresh air.”
“…okay. Fine.”
And she stormed out of the tiny office.
“Please forgive her. It’s been a stressful few days, what with giving birth and then having her little girl literally taken from her arms,” said Kame, “but she’s trying her best. Look, is there any situation at all where a child would be removed before the information goes into the computer?”
“If a doctor calls us in for suspected abuse, there wouldn’t be a full file but there would be at least the name in the computer and the notation that an agent was sent to handle it. But for no information at all? No.”
“The woman that took her, she was a little bit shorter than me, black hair about so long in a ponytail, brown eyes… um…” He was trying his best to picture the woman. “Thin mouth…” and he kept going, trying to recall as many details as he could.
“That sounds like Suzuki-san. She wasn’t working yesterday, though.”
Damn. Still, it was his best hope. “Then, please, Uno-san, may I speak to her?”
“Anything to get you out of my office…” the woman muttered under her breath. Normally it would annoy him but he was focused on his task. Pushing a different button on her phone, she said a bit louder, “Suzuki-san? Are you in your office?”
From the phone came a woman’s voice and it did actually sound like the voice of the woman at the hospital, “Yes. What do you need?”
“I’m sending someone to you.”
“Make it quick. I go to lunch in fifteen.”
“Okay.” Addressing Kame once more, she said, “Out the door, take the first left. Last office on the right.”
“Thanks.”
He left the woman’s office without another word and made directly for Suzuki-san’s office.
Luck was with him. It was indeed the same woman that had come to the hospital. He saw the recognition in her eyes but she said, “May I help you, Mr…?”
“Kamenashi. I’m here about the little girl you took from us yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, sir. You must be mistaken. I wasn’t working yesterday.” Though she said one thing, her body language and expression were completely different. Her voice was warm but her movements were cold and the look in her eyes was one of judgment and no small amount of hatred, though he had no notion what he’d done to earn that.
“I know it was you. You know it was you. I’ll get the cops if I have to.”
She smiled. “I think you will find that to be a waste of time. I have no clue what you’re talking about and I think you’ll find the cops don’t, either. I have nothing for you. Nothing… except this.”
The envelope she handed him was blank on the outside, but inside was a short handwritten note:
The money I made selling you is well spent. Don’t you agree?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 89 ~A Different Monster~
A/N: Well, there you go. Papa K is behind it after all. I guess he's decided that it's not a matter of getting Kame back to make more money so much as it is a matter of spending whatever it takes to punish him until he has nothing left.
I had envisioned a scene where Suzuki-san chastised Kame for being a bad son and a horrible person to show that Papa K is actually charming to people who don't know about his criminal side but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like this isn't how it would go. Papa K wouldn't want to tell people Kame is his son because then the bad things that happen to him will be easily traced back through that connection. So I just went with hinting at bribes which will either be confirmed or refuted as time goes on.
It's why the whores from Ryuichi's stroll that Papa K took to work for him blame Kame for their fate but still don't know he's related to Papa K.