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Die Fürsprache (bait and switch)	By : quietladybirman Category: Weiß Kreuz > General Views: 2425 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Weiß Kreuz, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
Die Fürsprache

(bait and switch)

a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

________

+ covenant

He smiles as if in apology for the intrusion as he slips through the half-open door and shuts it gently behind him, leaning far too casually against it and glancing about himself in free and frank curiosity. In some respects Ken hasn’t changed a bit though Youji, sat on the top of his bedsheets, propped uncomfortably against a promiscuous clutter of pillows, a magazine open and overlooked on his lap, instantly reads the smile as a fake and the calm as purest pretense. Displacement activity, an attempt to put off the moment when, inevitably, they will have to meet one another’s eyes.

“Did you know there’s no name card on your door?”

Youji has wondered what it will be like to see Ken again. In truth he wasn’t expecting anything of the sort until he made it back home, working from what Omi and (when pressed) Aya have told him though even Omi hasn’t said much. It’s none of my business, really, Omi had said awkwardly. Ken is where it matters an intensely private person: they all know that.

If something strikes Youji as he studies Ken discreetly from behind the camouflage of his curls it is how entirely ordinary Ken looks, how much of the boy is exactly as he remembers it being. The black long-sleeved sweater where before he would probably have stuck in short sleeves, cold weather be damned, strikes a false note, but it seems a small thing. He might only have worn it to keep the girls who haunted the shop from asking about the bandages which would be swathing his arms. Now that the fact of Ken's presence forces him to think about it Youji can’t quite imagine why he would ever have expected it to be otherwise, and yet he had expected it to be otherwise, no doubt about that.

Maybe Youji has imagined the slight note of unease in Ken's smile, or maybe it has always been there and he only notices it now because he is thinking to search for it. Ken isn’t looking at him; he isn’t looking at anything. He is gazing past him and out of the window at the unremarkable view, the threatening evening clouds, one foot resting against the door’s bland white surface and hiding discomfiture behind an unconvincing smile. Hanging back. He looks almost shy, as if Youji is someone he’s barely met – and yet that’s not it at all.

Youji tries to meet his friend’s eyes, and is unnerved to find he can’t bring himself to do it.

“You can come in, Ken,” he says, and it sounds awkward. He stumbles slightly over the single syllable of Ken's name.

Ken blinks, as if the invitation surprise him. “Did you know about the name thing?” He asks, adding, as if to excuse the question’s odd sound, “I wasn’t sure I’d got the right room. Because there was no name card. Um, how are you?” It occurs to him that he doesn’t actually know where Youji has been shot.

“Getting by.” Youji sighs. He can tell Ken is far from recovered himself, tell by the exhausted cast to his features, the way he holds himself. Youji knows Ken too well not to know when he is denying pain. “For God’s sake, Hidaka, sit down. You look like you’re about to pass out. Did you walk here?”

Ken smiles and shrugs; he can’t think why Youji still worries. “Sorry,” he says uneasily, and wonders what he’s really apologizing for.

“Fine, you’re sorry. Sit down.”

And it is easiest for Ken to acquiesce. He smiles again – and why can’t he stop goddamn smiling? is he that nervous? – sitting uncertainly on the edge of the bed and shifting his weight as if he can’t quite get comfortable. Hard for either of them to tell if he is simply sitting awkwardly or if his unease cuts deeper than bodily disquiet. The indefinable hospital smell that clings to the room, the cloying, overwhelming odor of disinfectant camouflaging a multitude of half-hidden sins. An uncomfortable scent, evoking memories he would like to deny possessing. You never were a good liar… Ken suspects he could really grow to hate hospitals.

(Guilt lurks discreetly by the door, a patient shadow. Biding its time.)

And it is odd, Youji thinks, that being in Ken's company should feel so profoundly awkward, their divided burden seemingly serving only to drive them apart even as it drags them into a strange, uneasy kind of proximity. Ken is near enough for him to touch and yet Youji can do no such thing for the distance between them is unbridgeable although it is no distance at all. Paradox. He can’t talk to Ken and if he can’t talk to Ken then who can he talk to?

The silence between them seems, a bad cliché, far too loud. Strange the way cliché does that, how the truth of them can catch one unawares.

Footsteps – a nurse, from their quick, purposeful tread – carry from the corridor and with them the gentle clamor of women’s voices, the intrusive high-pitched chime of an infusion pump’s alarm as the device stridently protests its sudden inability to do its job. Ken knows he closed the door properly so why all the noise? It seems funny in all senses of the word, though the joke is a bleak one, that hospitals should stick in the mind as quiet, sanctified places when in reality they should be so unyieldingly noisy; the clamor never stops. One of the nurses in the corridor is laughing. When I get out of here, Youji thinks dourly, I’m going to sleep for a week.

“I’m sorry,” Ken says again, suddenly and with an air of great resolution.

Youji raises his head, meeting Ken's eyes for – can it really be the first time since he arrived? – to discover Ken, head almost quizzically inclined, looking at him from the corners of his eyes and his demeanor is only apologetic. It is as if he is waiting to see how much trouble he is in this time and he is clearly expecting trouble. A maddeningly familiar expression, that.

“Sorry?” Youji can’t quite pretend he hasn’t been caught off-guard by the confession, on some level amazed, another frankly appalled. Sorry, Ken? As if he hadn’t apologized once already, and entirely needlessly at that… “What are you apologizing for now?” Ken shrugs. Says simply, “This.”

Oh, God, and he means it, and all his apology is to Youji is – it is agonizing. It is sudden pain, unexpected and unwarranted. It is a slap in the face from a woman he loves, it is Asuka, her eyes furious, berating him for a slight he never intended and can’t even remember he gave. As if Ken had been anything other than utterly innocent. Youji doesn’t know whose fault their situation is but he’s damned sure it isn’t Ken's.

“For Christ’s sakes, don’t say that!” Youji says sharply. Where has the anger come from, and who is it aimed at? “That’s not how it works and you know it! Schuldig raped you and you’re sitting there apologizing?” (And he thinks he sees Ken start slightly, but he ignores it, has no option but to ignore it.) “You’re not stupid, Ken. Don’t play it.”

“No, Youji.” Ken says; he sounds only horribly tired. “That’s not it. I—” He breaks off, fighting back nausea, a strange taste in the mouth and certain tightening in the back of the throat. Call it self-disgust. He can’t claim it’s unwarranted. “He… Schuldig wasn’t lying. We really did make a deal. Don’t you get it?” When Youji does nothing but watch him, for all the world as if he hasn’t heard or has determined to make this harder than it has to be Ken adds softly, despairingly, wishing he didn’t have to speak and shatter Youji’s illusions so, “I consented.”

“You consented?” Youji echoes incredulously. “Ken…”

Ken really does flinch this time, flushing in sheer humiliation – he has misread him utterly. “I’m sorry, Youji,” he says frantically. “I thought…” But he doesn’t know what to say he thought. He hasn’t a clue what he’d been thinking. Only thing, he still thinks it was worth it. Do you hate me for it?

“You call that consent?” The shock is plain in Youji’s voice. “Just what did he say to you? No, don’t tell me… he threatened me, didn’t he?”

(Don’t you dare blame yourself, Ken. I did this.)

Ken says nothing. He only stares, his lips parted slightly in preparation for the words he can’t seem to find, his deep brown eyes wide and troubled. This isn’t working out the way he’d imagined it would; yes, he’d expected Youji’s anger but he’d expected that anger to be directed at him so why in the world isn’t it? Why doesn’t Youji realize how stupid he’s been? Ken looks cornered, angry and frightened and desperately embarrassed and what can he say? Youji is demanding the truth and how can he honestly answer a question like that without making it look like he’s trying to pass the blame? It’s so difficult, it’s so fucking painful, and it’s no more than he deserves. Yes, he’s scared.

“What,” Youji demands brusquely, “did he say, Ken?”

“I fucked up.” Ken says in a small, weary voice he can barely recognize as his own. Youji frowns and looks as if he is about to interrupt, but Ken cuts him off. “No, listen to me. Schuldig got the drop on me, that’s all. I should’ve…”

“Shut up, Hidaka.” Youji says quietly and calmly and somehow it leaves Ken more afraid than if the blonde had screamed at him, or punctuated his words with a backhanded slap. “Don’t you dare try and tell me you consented ever again. If you think that was consent you don’t know the meaning of the word! Schuldig threatened me and you wanted to keep me safe, even if it meant killing yourself. Right?” You bloody fool!

“He said he’d kill you,” Ken replies flatly, but there is a copper taint at the back of his mouth and knows he is on the verge of tears. “What was I supposed to have done?”

Oh, Christ. It’s Asuka all over again only somehow they’ve both survived and still it hurts; life sticks in the groove, the phrase repeats itself until all sense is gone. “So you’d have died for me instead? Don’t you think I want you to live?”

Ken blinks. “But he was asking me.”

It was that or he killed the both of us, Youji. What else could I do?

Ken doesn’t want an answer. Same result: I’d take a bullet for you. The difference is in the detail.

Worst thing is that in a hideous way he is nothing but grateful. Grateful to even be having this conversation, horrible though it is. Somehow he’s almost happy. He wouldn’t have done anything different even knowing the price. Maybe life stinks but at least he’s alive to appreciate just how fucking awful survival is…

Ken smiles, but it makes no difference; he still looks like he wants to cry and never mind that he can’t do that. He can’t cry on top of everything else but he isn’t quite sure why it is important to hold back now. He must have lost so much ground in Youji’s eyes already that the quiet indignity of his tears really can’t matter any more (Youji’s seen him do worse; the thought really makes him want to cry). But they do, and it surprises him that they do.

And Youji doesn’t think he’s ever realized quite how resilient Ken really is before now. The boy sits on the edge of his bed, head bowed, eyes closed in a desperate, futile attempt to hide the tears that form there, hands resting on his upper arms as if he is cold and all Youji can think is God, he’s strong. He’s always been so strong and he doesn’t even know it. Ken doesn’t appreciate how very difficult what he’s done truly is, and it hadn’t even occurred to him to do otherwise. You don’t know what the Hell you’ve got, Ken, Youji thinks, and feels himself smile mournfully.

It hurts that all Schuldig could think about someone as remarkable as Ken was how best to use him, that all he ever was to the Schwarz was a body. He could have been anyone at all, not that anyone at all would have thrown themselves away for someone else’s sake in the same way Ken had done. In all honesty Youji doesn’t know if he could ever have done the same. Maybe he could, if the circumstances were right – but Ken, he knows, hadn’t cared that he was Youji but only that he was a person who, in his eyes, deserved to live. He’d have done it for anyone.

That he wouldn’t think twice about selling himself cheap is what makes Ken far too fine to do it.

“That doesn’t make what happened your fault.” Youji says softly. He’d rather Ken blame him than that he blamed himself. Ken had been in the wrong place, he’d been victimized only because he cared. If anyone had screwed up Youji knew it was him, not Ken. “You’re not thinking. You were threatened. You’d never have let that bastard Schuldig get anywhere near you if he hadn’t forced you into it.”

“But I fucked up,” Ken says desperately, as if he is trying to talk Youji out of blaming himself. “I should never…”

Youji cuts him off. “No. You can’t consent to anything with a gun to your head, Kenken.”

He doesn’t really mean to take Ken's hand. As his fingers close around Ken's (encountering warm, callused skin and the soft yet oddly uncomfortable rasp of the bandages that cross his palms), he feels Ken recoil and try, almost without intending to, to pull his hand free. Youji holds on tight and waits and the moment passes, Ken looking mistrustfully at him for a moment but, for whatever reason, consenting to the contact. He’d always been a tactile person, Ken; to think of him withdrawing into miserable isolation simply because of Schuldig leaves Youji disgusted with himself. Look what you’ve done, Kudou; you can’t leave him like this.

Ken accepts it, after a beat abstractedly letting his fingers close around Youji’s own. He knows Youji needs the reassurance so much more than he does.

“This isn’t your fault.” Youji says emphatically, meeting and holding Ken's gaze (and he can tell Ken wants to look away, but somehow he doesn’t). “Don’t blame yourself.”

Blame me, his eyes are saying. Lay it on me instead. Why does he want to be blamed for something he couldn’t help? Ken doesn’t understand, it doesn’t make sense. He fucked up and played into Schuldig’s hands and now Youji wants him to say no, it’s not my fault, it’s yours? But what was Youji ever supposed to do, Ken wonders, against a mad bastard of a German with lightning-fast reflexes and a goddammed handgun? Youji’s good with that wire of his, Ken knows, but there’s only so far good will take him when he’s up against a Schwarz who’s playing for keeps. Youji’s just lucky that Schuldig, for all of his posturing, appears to be a pretty lousy shot. Lucky to be alive.

They’re both damned lucky to be alive.

When Ken thinks about what they could have lost, which he admits he probably isn’t doing enough, his present grief seems horribly petty. He wonders if Youji thinks he’s overdoing it.

“For God’s sake,” Ken says impatiently, “what will hating you help? You made a mistake, that’s all!”

Youji surprises himself when he starts to laugh softly. Only you. Ken always had been eerily forgiving; he was eager to trust and – Youji had always said this, long before things had become personal – far too willing to grant second chances to those who’d done absolutely nothing to warrant them. How could Ken consider him irreproachable? He doesn’t deserve his understanding. “No, I’m the one who screwed up, Ken.” Youji says after a moment has passed. “Not you. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I’d have died for sure. None of this would ever have happened if I’d just had a bit of sense.”

“That doesn’t mean you did it.” Ken says firmly. “I’m not going to hate you because you want me to, you moron. You didn’t make Schuldig… well, you know.” He blushes again, turning to the window and raising his eyebrows when he notices, as if for the first time, the gathering dusk. It must have taken him longer to get here than he realized. At some point it has started, reluctantly, to rain and the heavy droplets patter shyly and erratically against the windowpanes. “But you didn’t. Shit, it’s late. I’m gonna have to go soon, right?”

“Forget it.” Youji says. I don’t want you to leave. Not yet. He can’t tell if Ken is making a clumsy attempt to change the subject or if he’s simply making a blunt, if rather off-kilter observation – being, in other words, himself. “Listen, if it’s not my fault then it’s definitely not yours. I don’t want you blaming yourself over this. It’s not your fault you care.”

He speaks firmly, a parent trying to talk round an adamantly anguished child but he suspects Ken won’t begin to believe him or even really hear. Trauma is an obdurate creature, clinging ferociously to its host with teeth and claws buried deep beneath the skin; Ken single-minded by his very nature. A poor combination. He wouldn’t get over what he’d been through overnight no matter how badly Youji might wish, if only to ease his own guilty conscience, that could happen.

Youji wants too much. Ken will never truly get over it – to ask that of him would be, after such an intimate and calculating violation, to ask the impossible. Youji only knows that he mustn’t blame himself. It could never be Ken's fault. In time, he promises himself, he’ll make Ken understand where the responsibility really lies, even if all it means is that Ken ends up hating him for it…

Youji has yet to truly comprehend that Schuldig targeted him, too. He has yet to realize he is also a victim.

“Christ, Youji, I’ve been such an idiot,” Ken says wistfully.

He slumps forward, lets the plane of one cheek rest lightly against Youji’s shoulder as he continues to gaze, blank and uncomprehending, through the window at the contradictory rain. He can’t think why he does it when the feel of another’s body so close to his makes him want to scream and he hates the way Youji puts his arms round him, but all the same he needs it and he doesn’t pull away for solitude is even worse. He needs Youji to understand because someone out there has to and he’s such a fuck-up and he doesn’t know what to do any more, or why he came here, or anything at all…

Ken isn’t crying, but once again he can’t escape the feeling that by rights he should be. No, he can’t believe. Not yet, maybe not ever. He probably is overreacting, but what can he do about that? It hurts. It all hurts so goddamned much and there’s absolutely nothing he can do. Schuldig raped him. It isn’t fair.

And holding him is a subtle agony. Youji closes his eyes because he can’t bear to look any more. It’s his fault they’re here.

“I’ll kill him, Ken.” Youji murmurs feverishly, and once again the idea of it, distant and hopeless though it is, proves a strange kind of consolation. “I’m going to kill him for doing this to you.” To us – but he can’t say that. Can’t admit to the fact that he needs Schuldig dead for his own sake too, because to do so will be to lose something vital…

Ken doesn’t move. He tastes copper, feels a hot, familiar something stinging the corners of his eyes and he quickly closes them, the last resort of those desperate to hold back tears (maybe that way it won’t happen). “You can try,” he says, and he sounds forsaken, frightened, curiously childlike, “but what will that change?”

There are no answers.

-ende-
- 6
- 7
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Die Fürsprache (bait and switch)