No Mercy
Prologue: Ghost
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Title: No
Mercy
Author: Blythe
Archived:
AdultFanFiction.net, MediaMiner.org, YxA ML, for now.
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fanfiction and is not for profit.
Rating:
NC-17, for future chapters
Pairing: Aya/Yohji,
silly
A/N: This
is the beginning of the sequel to “Not Now, Not Ever.”
NNNE and the present. “Not Now, Not Ever”
is not required reading, you will still be able to follow if you’ve not read
it, but this will make more sense if you have.
chore of beta for me!
Prologue: Ghost
There’s a letter on
the desktop
That I dug out of a
drawer
The last truce we ever
came to
In our adolescent war
From his position on the bed, Aya can see the letter on his
desk. It is taunting him, calling him to
read it one more time. Just one more
time and he’ll find the hidden clue, the answers he’s been seeking.
it over the last seven months, but he knows he doesn’t need to read it
again. He doesn’t need to read it
because he knows what it says. Every
word is burned into his mind, his retinas.
They dance before him when he closes his eyes, teasing, hinting that the
answers are there if only he would read them the right way.
And I start to feel
the fever
From the warm air
through the screen
You come regular like
seasons
Shadowing my dreams
He turns away from the sight before him, toward the
window. It was just starting to turn
cold when everything changed. Now, it’s
just beginning to get warm. It’s
unseasonably warm today and the breeze sets a flush to his skin.
like seasons. For a few weeks he’s fine,
accepting of their loss. Weiss is now a
three man team. Manx didn’t even try to
find a new member. She knows there’s no
replacement.
For a few weeks he’s fine, accepting of his loss.
it, nevertheless, feels empty without him.
Then, the dreams start; a shadow moving through his mind, alternating
between dead and alive.
He reads the letter again.
The answer has to be there.
It has to. He
needs to know. He needs to know if he’s
searching for a man who needed to escape Life or one who just needed to escape
his life.
Rereading the events of his lover’s life he thinks,
did.’ He really couldn’t blame the
man if he’d wanted to die, though the thought sends a lead weight to the pit of
his stomach and he gasps for breath. He
can’t bear the thought of the world without him.
The
But it starts in
In a place that you
could walk across
With five steps down
And I guess that’s how
you started,
Like a pinprick to my
heart
But at this point you
rush right through me
And I start to drown
He’s surprised at the depth of his feelings.
simultaneously attracted and repulsed.
Then, he’d recognized the mask and found himself intrigued.
emotions. By the time his sister had woken
up, he was in love. Just before
frightened of it. It felt like
drowning. The soft caress and peaceful
white noise of submersion in warm water, juxtaposed with the burning panic of
oxygen deprived organs.
He’d already been alone for a month when he tried the word
on out loud. He’d been talking to his
sister. He’d said, “He was my love. I
loved him.” And then, she’d smacked him.
With a hand on his cheek he’d turned to face her,
dumbfounded. Her eyes had been sparkling
with anger and tears. “Don’t you ever
talk about him in the past tense again. He is not gone!”
She’d been so sure.
Why couldn’t he share her faith?
He’d had faith once. He’d never
stopped believing that Aya-chan would wake up.
Why couldn’t he believe for his heart now?
He reread the letter.
Maybe he’d find the answers this time.
And there’s not enough
room in this world for my pain
Signals cross and love
gets lost and time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon sprits
I need you the most
I’m in love with your
ghost
For as much as love feels like drowning, despair and guilt
feel that way too, only more solid.
Instead of the promise of buoyancy that water offers, despair is more
solid. Pain is a crushing weight, so
large it seems the entire world isn’t big enough to house it.
Looking over time passed, things that should have been
clearer, sooner, become plain. He didn’t
just love him. He didn’t want to just
own him. He wanted, wants still, to be
loved by him. There are days when his
memory feels like a demon, shredding his sanity.
near, always. His lover is a wraith,
born of words unspoken and love unrequited.
Dark and dangerous
like a secret
That gets whispered in
a hush
When I wake the things
I dreamt
About you last night
make me blush
The dreams are so vivid!
Some nights, he dreams of those last few days in the cabin.
contact. A casual touch here, a kiss
there, just leaning against each other on the couch to read.
entwined, bodies locked together in the most intimate embrace.
he is working in the Koneko and he feels his cheeks fire with shame.
Shame because he should be thinking about his love’s safety and
welfare. Longing because, for as long
he’s known him, he’s been distracted by that body.
And you kiss me like a
lover
Then you sting me like
a viper
I go follow to the
river
Play your memory like
a piper
Sometimes, when the memories are playing through his mind
like an old reel-to-reel, he cuts and splices, making a movie memory of
something new. Something that never was,
but should have been.
And I feel it like a
sickness, how this love is killing me
But I’d walk into the
fingers of your fire willingly
And dance the edge of sanity;
I’ve never been this close
In love with your
ghost
I’m in love with your
ghost
There are mornings, after the dreams have plagued him all
night long, that he feels like he is dying.
His love, scorching his blood like poison, raising a fever in him that
has no cure but a man no one can find.
He can see the precipice before him and he dances along the edge,
balanced precariously, kept on this side only by the ethereal weight of a
ghost.
Unknowing captor
You’ll never know how
much you
Pierce my spirit
But I can’t touch you
Can you hear it, a cry
to be free
But I’m forever under
lock and key
As you pass through me
He tries to believe.
He tries to have his sister’s guileless faith, his teammates’ unwavering
devotion. He tries to hope.
fingers pass through the vision and it dissipates.
pain, but unwilling to relinquish his hold on this man.
“Mine,” he’d told him.
And meant it.
Now I see your face
before me
I would launch a
thousand ships
To bring your heart
back to my island
As the sand beneath me
slips
A photograph, the only one he has.
corner, candid. It’s really a picture of
himself, something one of the fangirls snuck, no doubt.
expeditions into his love’s room. Right
there, in the bedside table drawer, under a journal that he’d hoped might hold
some answers. But it wasn’t a
journal. It was a sketchbook.
every pose, in varying degrees of light and dark, captured in any available
medium. He thought he’d quit
drawing. Turns out, he was just hiding
it.
Aya searched, continues searching.
activity on his credit card, John Does at the morgues.
open. Aya contacts everyone he can think
of, goes to clubs, stakes out old haunts.
As I burn up in your
presence
And I know now how it
feels
To be weakened like
Achilles
With you always at my
heels
Once, he felt the heat creep into his skin that always
accompanied his lover’s presence. He’d
looked around wildly, knowing he was
there. Knowing that it couldn’t be
anyone else, but him.
flashing in his eyes and he could see nothing.
He’d dashed to the parking lot, saw a cab pulling away from the curb,
but could not follow. That was four months
ago.
On missions, he still feels him at his back, dogging his
footsteps. Some nights, he feels calm,
reassured by his company. Others, he
feels weak, certain that he is losing the tenuous grip on his sanity if he
cannot even get through a mission without his personal apparition.
him as an imaginary friend instead of a specter.
this world and he’s not ready to accept that.
Huh, guess he has faith after all.
And my bitter pill to
swallow is the silence that I keep
It poisons me, I can’t
swim free, the river is too deep
Though I’m baptized by
your touch, I am no worse than most
In love with your
ghost
He speaks about it only to his sister.
and resent it.
Omi once said, “You must know something! You were the last
on to see him al—“
Aya cut him off with a look.
A glare strong enough to wilt even Weiss’ golden child.
fidelity out of complacency. Because,
that’s what faith is.
Fidelity to Yohji.
Belief that he is alive.
Conviction that Aya will find him.
Hope that he will come home.
*************************************************************
Song is “Ghost” by the Indigo Girls.