Alternatives

Awakenings


\"Give me your fucking cell phone now, you creep!\"

That voice, Aya knew that voice. Tenor, made husky by years of smoking. A beautiful voice but the last voice on earth that he wanted to hear right now. Gods, no. He had to be delirious. Yohji could not possibly be here. He was happily and obliviously married and living far away.

\"I don’t care if he is a deadbeat, give me the damned phone!\"

Well the language was Yohji’s, certainly. He groaned softly as pain from the knife wound arced through his body, making him shudder.

\"It’s okay, I’m getting help. Just hang on. Don’t die on me.\"

There was the sound of numbers being swiftly punched into a cell phone and then nothing.

Gradually, he became aware of blood. It was all around them like a crimson sea. They were wading, thigh high in the stuff. He and Yohji, Ken and whoever, or whatever, Omi had now become. The boy’s face was that of Takatori Reiji. He couldn’t figure that out, tried to make sense of it. Oh yes, of course, he was a Takatori now.

It was then that Yohji stumbled and fell face first into the gore. With an inarticulate cry, Aya pulled at him until his head was above the surface once again. Yohji shook his head and smiled at him before going under again, quite deliberately this time. He mouthed the one word ‘absolution’ before being lost to view.

\"It’s for the best,\" the Takatori said before dragging a struggling Ken, who was now wearing a straight-jacket, away and leaving Aya alone.

\"Yohji!\" The cry was torn from his throat as he battled the blood and the hurt.

Anxious green eyes were staring down at him. A hand was gently shaking him awake. \"Its okay, its just a dream,\" a voice was saying. Somehow, these impressions were soothing and Aya let himself drift off to sleep again.

He awoke to the sight of a strange, polystyrene-tiled ceiling with fluorescent lighting. A glance to the left showed him instruments and monitors. So. His hell was a hospital. That made sense. He shut his eyes again, waiting for whatever punishment came next.

Gradually, he became aware of the dull ache in his side. One hand lifted awkwardly to feel bandages around the lower part of his rib-cage. Well, damn, he seemed to be alive after all. He groaned slightly and bit his lip in frustration. He loathed being a patient. He hated the weakness that went with infirmity.

\"You’re awake?\"

His eyes snapped open again and he looked towards the sound of that voice. Kudoh Yohji was sitting in a chair by the bed, smiling slightly.

\"Yohji?\" His voice was hoarse and his throat dry as if he’d been shouting, so the word came out as little more than a croak.

There was an arrested look in his companion’s green eyes before a frown marred his handsome features. \"You’ve been dreaming about a Yohji,\" he said. \"No, my name is Ito. Ito Ryo. Although the name Yohji does seem somehow familiar. Do you know me?\"

\"No.\" He couldn’t tell him, couldn’t risk all those memories dragging this seemingly contented man back into insanity. He turned his eyes away before deliberately lying to his onetime friend and lover. \"You remind me of someone with that name. Someone I haven’t seen for a while.\"

The whole, surreal conversation served to convince him that he was in an actual hospital and not hell. He was alive and would doubtless go back to killing. What else could he do, after all? The thought filled him with grief and he sighed.

\"Ah,\" Yohji said quietly, apparently content once more. He chuckled. \"You know my name, but I don’t know yours. You were checked in as a John Doe.\"

He took a deep shuddering breath. Would the giving of his name make Yohji remember? Perhaps if he gave his real name it wouldn’t trigger any memories. \"Ran, my name is Ran.\"

\"Ran. It suits you somehow.\"

He had long ago lost count of the times Yohji had made throwaway remarks like that. The very annoying habit was part of the man.

\"It was good of you to wait, Ito-san.\" He risked glancing at his rescuer once more, who shrugged.

\"I had nothing else to do. Nowhere I needed to be. And I know how disorienting hospitals can be. I woke up in one myself, not so long ago.\"

Yes, Aya realised, with no memory of who you were or what you had been. Lucky, lucky Kudoh. So what the hell are you doing this far away from home?

\"Thank you for being here. I must not keep you, however. Doubtless you have business to attend to.\"

Another shrug. \"I just wanted to see some of the world. Seems I had a large bank balance so I thought I’d use it to travel.\"

\"Oh.\" He could think of nothing else to say that would not be redundant or jog the memory of the man by his bed. The blankness was Yohji’s passport to freedom. If he spent too much time around here, he might start to remember, and that would dump him right back into the insanity that those memories would bring with them. Aya couldn’t allow that to happen. \"Well, I’m fine now. Thank you for everything.\" He turned his head away to stare unseeingly at the monitors.

\"Listen, if you need anything, clothes bringing in, edible food I’d be happy to help.\"

\"No. Thank you. I’m fine.\" Please, Yohji, just go away before I taint you with my presence. Or worse still, start to cry.

\"As long as you’re sure…\" There was a wistful note in those few words, but Aya could not give in to emotion and drag the man down to hell again. Let him enjoy his wayward travels in peace. He said nothing and kept his face turned away as something wet ran down his cheek and into the pillow.

He felt, rather than heard, Yohji’s departure. He should have been relieved but the tears refused to stop flowing down his cheeks.

\"Stupid, stupid,\" he said aloud, startling the nurse who had come into the ward to check up on him.

\"You’re awake,\" she echoed Yohji’s words. \"Let’s get your pulse taken and your bed straightened. Make you more comfortable.\"

He winced slightly at her American brashness but permitted her to take his pulse if it pleased her. He was still attached to the instruments and had a drip flowing into his arm when she had finished.

\"Do I have to keep all this?\" His voice sounded petulant, even to his own ears.

\"Until the doctor has seen you, yes. You lost a lot of blood. We need to make up your fluids.\"

He sighed. \"So, how long do I have to stay here?\"

\"Again, that’s up to the doctor to decide, Mr…..?\"

He opened his mouth to say Fujimiya but suddenly Yohji’s words came to mind. \"You were checked in as a John Doe.\" Perhaps it should stay that way. \"Suzuki.\" A common enough Japanese name.

\"And your er….given name?\"

\"Ran.\"

\"Thank you. Try to get some rest. There is water on the night-stand and the doctor will be around to see you in the morning.\" She left in a rustle of starched cotton and he was able to think again.

He quickly came to the conclusion that his first reaction had been the correct one. He was stupid to still…….have feelings for a man who had let him down so often. So many times he had almost let himself give into a relationship based on more than just sex, only to have Yohji chase after another woman, or worse, the ghost of his lost love.

He had known that most of the women didn’t matter. They were Yohji’s way of proving to himself that he was still alive inside. But a few of them had mattered, had mattered too much. Asuka, Neu, Michelle, Tsuji Mayumi. And of all of them, the only one who hadn’t been a prize bitch was the first. No wonder Yohji had gone mad with it all.

He remembered a long ago conversation the two of them had had. He had asked Yohji why he never killed their female targets. Even the bitch at Riot had been left to him although Yohji had ignored injury to take out the man and avenge Maki.

\"After…Asuka, after that, I always wanted to protect women, you know? Even before then, really. And since she’s been…..gone, I see her face on every woman. How can I kill them when I see her?\"

He had shaken his head and sighed. \"No, Yohji, not all women are like Asuka. Most of them are prize bitches. Haven’t you learned that yet?\"

Yohji had grinned. \"Yeah, but apart from your sister, you don’t like women, Aya. I love them.\"

\"I don’t dislike women, Yohji. I just know what they are capable of.\" His mother had taught him that lesson. If ever he or Aya-chan had been in trouble, it had been their mother who had punished them, and had appeared to relish the job. \"To treat them all as if they were Asuka is to underestimate them. Women are far stronger than you seem to think, Yohji, and capable of as much treachery as men. Even if they do wear the face of your lost love.\"

Of course, he hadn’t been able to convince his sometimes lover of that fact and a month after that Yohji had strangled Neu as she had proclaimed her love for Masafumi with her last breath. He had never been quite the same man again. Every day had seen him descend even further into the madness.

\"Stupid, both of us,\" he whispered the words aloud, not caring if any passing nurses heard. \"You, for trying too hard, and me, for being too afraid to try at all.\"

He toyed with the idea that loving Yohji would have made a difference, then snorted wryly at the very idea. Yohji would have been oblivious and he would have been hurt even more than he was now.

No, allowing himself to love Yohji would have been a huge mistake. So why the hell was he crying again? He wiped the tears away, angry with himself for being so emotional over something that had been over before it ever really began.

* * * * * * *

Yohji stepped into the elevator, his thoughts full of the beautiful man that had been left for dead on the city streets like so much garbage. There was something so painfully familiar about him. And those improbable and incredibly beautiful eyes would not shift out of his mind.

The elevator began its downward journey while Yohji still attempted to remember his past. It was normal behaviour for him, unable as he was to deal with most of his life missing from his memory. Today, though, he was finding concentration especially difficult.

His thoughts returned again and again to those cold, purple eyes. He’d only caught the briefest glimpse of them before the man had turned away. After that Ran, or whatever his name was, had kept them half closed, or turned away. Constantly and deliberately hidden from view. But something about Yohji noticed little details like eye colour, intentional evasions and acute discomfort. He thought like a hero from a cheap detective novel, or a cop. Perhaps that was what he had been before the accident.

What about that tattoo on his left arm? Why the inverted Christian symbol and the word sin? And what were the other words on the design about? When you gonna learn? When who was gonna learn? Him or someone he’d known? What had possessed the man he had been to choose such a design? He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. So many questions with no damned answers.

Suddenly he was sliding down the elevator wall as a whole barrage of images hit him with painful intensity. Narrowed purple eyes glaring at him. Those same eyes filled with pain and tension as they fought each other. Eartails, the colour of blood, spread across a pillow, highlighting a naked, creamy chest. A tall redhead with the same face as the man in the hospital bed, katana in hand, standing over the corpse of a middle-aged man while fire raged around them all. Focus and icy strength covering the desperation of a lost….sister. Aya.

Yohji wasn’t sure if he could stand just yet. The images had been so powerful but still so very disjointed. At least he knew now exactly whose katana it was that rested in his case. Aya. So why had the man given him a different name? And what had happened to the crimson hair and the eartails?

Yohji knew that this Aya held the key to some of his lost memories and he wanted them back, good or bad. He climbed slowly to his feet and stepped out of the elevator when it hit street level. He exited the building and turned to gaze back up at the tall hospital, at a particular floor, at one window. He nodded to himself, his mind made up.

\"I’ll see you tomorrow….Aya.\"