Recall

[lady_ganesh]

Moar Ran-verse, this time with Original Flavor Ran! Nothing really warnings-worthy aside from non-explicit mentions of stuff that already happened.

Love as always to emungere for betaing.



It was mostly nostalgia, an emotion he thought he'd conquered long ago, that led Fujimiya Aya to the flower shop. He'd planned to just pass the front door, see what had changed, maybe glimpse one of the girls.

Sakura noticed him from twenty feet away, half-concealed behind a tree.

"Ay-- Ran-san!"

Not for the first time, Aya thought she would have made an excellent assassin. One of the Crashers, better still. He turned around, pretending not to hear her, planning to lose her in the crowd.

He couldn't.

She shouldn't have been an assassin, Aya found himself thinking viciously, as he heard her feet pounding toward him. She should have been a damned ninja.

"Ran-san," she said, catching him up finally.

He turned around. "Sakura-chan." He didn't bother feigning surprise.

"I'm so glad to see you," she said, standing a respectful distance but still too close. "I've been hoping you were all right. Takatori-sama said he'd tell me if anything happened, but...."

"I've been fine," he said. "How are you?"

"I'm good," she said. "I'm still working at the flower shop. Aya-chan's married now."

His heart stopped for a moment. "Is she--"

"You have to go see her. She's very happy. But she'd be so much happier if you spoke to her. Please, promise me you'll go!" She was standing up on her tiptoes, her face eager and bright.

It was as futile as standing in the way of a steamroller. He nodded, and she pulled a pen and one of the flower shop's cards out of her pocket. "Here," she said, scribbling furiously. "That's the address, and that's her number. She's home with the baby right now, so you can stop by any time, I'm sure."

The baby. The words hit his solar plexus, and he realized Sakura had been timing her punches-- first the wedding, then the promise, then the baby. Age hadn't dulled her mind a bit, even though her face and body had softened a bit with the passage of time. She looked less like Aya now, but it suited her. She was now quite beautiful in her own right, not just for her resemblance to his sister.

"I'm living over the flower shop," she said. "Come tonight and I'll make you dinner."

"I can't," he said. "I have--" He had nothing. They had given him seven days to complete the mission, and he'd just returned to Japan the night before.

"Please?" she said. "Just dinner. You don't have to talk about anything. We can just eat. I've gotten to be quite a good cook."

"I-- I'll come if I can," he stammered, and backed away from her.

He found Hidaka Ken at a park in Marunouchi coaching a group of children at soccer. Ken looked older, but the kids were almost unchanged from the fresh, sunlit faces he remembered hanging around the flower shop. Aya found himself watching them more carefully than he ever had; would his niece look like that? Or did he have a nephew? Perhaps there were more children; perhaps there would be more.

He had grown so used to a family of two that the thought of children-- the thought of the family line being a line again-- was like something out of a story, or a bad joke.

Ken looked...good. Tanned and happy, shouting out orders to the kids like a natural-born coach. Hell, maybe he was. He certainly wasn't made to be an assassin.

Ken sighted him; Aya saw his eyebrows raise, though his face stayed still. Aya raised his hand in a sad mockery of a wave.

Ken yelled at the kids to take a lap around the park and jogged over. "What's up?" he asked.

"I'm supposed to be bringing you back," Aya said helplessly. Talking with Sakura had left him feeling that circumstances had spun helplessly out of his control while he hadn't been paying attention.

"I'm not going back," Ken said, which had been exactly what Aya expected.

"I told them you probably wouldn't."

"What are you supposed to do? If I say no?"

Aya shrugged. He had a long list of things he had been told to do.

"I don't want to fight you," Ken said, looking at Aya's shoes. "I will, though. If I have to."

"I know," Aya said.

"I gotta get back to the kids," Ken said. Aya nodded, and watched him go.

He went back to his hotel room and stared out the window. He'd known Ken wouldn't go without a fight. He could fight him, and he'd almost certainly win, but after that, his options were murkier. Killing him would defeat the purpose; smuggling him on a plane was possible, but just barely. Interior Minister Takatori Mamoru had enough power to shut the airlines down, and probably the boats in the harbor beside. And he'd be expecting Side B to make a move. The one advantage he had was the assassination attempt that had brought Ken back to Japan in the first place; the intel said they were still significantly down in manpower. But Aya knew-- perhaps better than anyone back in Europe-- just how influential the Takatori family was, and how far past Kritiker's structure their reach could span.

Maybe he should talk to Mamoru. Ken would tell him anyway; he had nothing to lose. Maybe Mamoru would consider Ken a liability and want him gone.

He resolved to visit Mamoru in the morning. He thought about getting something out, or ordering into the hotel room.

He thought about Sakura, sitting alone in the apartment, waiting for a guest who would never come. Eating anything seemed like a betrayal.

She had probably already told Aya-chan he was in Japan by now.

I am Fujimiya Aya, he told himself. I am a killer. My hands are too stained with blood to turn back now.

He put his head in his hands. Sakura wasn't married; she wouldn't have invited him to dinner if she was. Had she waited for him? How insane would someone have to be to wait for him?

Aya was home with her baby, and probably her husband. Ken was staying at the castle with Mamoru. And he was sitting in a hotel room alone, while Sakura waited, and her food got cold.

He got to the flower shop at nine. The stairs were the same lonely, ramshackle affair he remembered, but he could smell the vegetables as he walked up them; curry, he recognized. The flavor resembled his mother's; had Aya given her the recipe?

"I'm a murderer," he said, when she opened the door.

She didn't say anything. Her eyes seemed very wide.

"I'll probably go back to Europe. I only have a week here."

She stepped back and let him in the apartment. "I'm glad you came," she said. "I-- I don't care about any of those things."

"You should," he said.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Did you-- have you waited for me? You shouldn't--"

She shook her head. "I dated, a little. I just..." She shrugged her shoulders again.

He kissed her. She kissed him back, which he'd expected. "Ran-san," she said, when they parted for breath, and he surprised himself by kissing her again.

So much had changed; the apartment was a woman's now, feminine, with a different smell and a different feel. She was using his old bedroom, and he wondered, again, if she knew, how much she knew. "How can you forgive me? How can you even stand being in the same room as me?"

"You saved me," she said. "I know you're good at heart. Isn't that all that matters?"

He wanted to argue with her, but her breasts were pressed tight against his chest and his hand had landed on her waist, and he was having difficulty thinking about anything else.

Eighteen hours later, he had still not called his sister or spoken to Mamoru. He had brought Sakura to orgasm five times in three different sexual positions, made breakfast, bought the newspaper, and spent at least six hours staring out the window of the apartment, trying to decide what to do next.

He went to the park again and found Ken. "Hey," Ken said, when he'd dismissed the kids from practice. "I don't have to fight you, do I?"

Aya shrugged.

"Have you talked to your sister?"

He shook his head.

"You don't have to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself. You're punishing her, too."

Aya crossed his arms over his chest.

"You wanna go out and have dinner? We can talk."

He shook his head. He'd already promised Sakura he'd be back for dinner.

"You can stay in Japan, you know. Mamoru'd like that."

Would he? "Everyone wants me to stay," he said, darkly.

Ken grinned. "Probably, yeah."

"If I try to leave Side B--"

"We can handle them," Ken said, and his confidence was slightly unsettling. "Nagi's as strong as he ever was, and...they've got other options. Mamoru will back you up. I know it."

"I don't deserve a normal life," Aya said. "None of us do."

"Yeah," Ken said, kicking the dirt. "I know."

When he opened the door to Sakura's apartment, a familiar voice greeted him. "Ran-nii-san!"

His sister was in his arms before his brain caught up with the full extent of his doom. She was crying.

He held her. "Are you staying this time?" she asked. "Oh, please say you're staying. I'm so happy to see you--"

He could say nothing; it was too much, too much to see her so happy, so beautiful, so much older but still so Aya. He put a hand up to his earring before he could stop himself. She stepped back and looked at him. "You're too thin," she declared through her tears.

He could see Sakura hovering just in the distance, and could read her expression perfectly: Please don't be mad at me. She was holding a baby. He sat down, dazed.

"Ran-nii?"

He reached out and held his sister again. "Your child," he said, finally. "What's his name?"

"Hiroshi," she said, and took him from Sakura. "He wants to meet you."

He held the baby. It felt like someone was kicking at his heart until it started again.

I don't deserve this, he thought.

"I don't care what you've done," Aya said, holding onto his knee. "I need my brother. He needs an uncle. Please?"

He wanted to run. Instead, he stood there, frozen.

"I need to tell you some things," she said. "Will you sit down?"

"That wasn't fair," Ran told her after dinner, when they were washing up and Aya was feeding the baby in the living room.

"I know," Sakura said, not meeting his eyes.

Forget ninja, he thought. If she'd gone into organized crime, she could put Mamoru to shame. He put his plate back in the water and put his arms around her again. "I'll go talk to Mamoru in the morning," he said. "We'll figure something out."

"Good," she said, into his shoulder, and he realized that she was crying.

"I don't deserve you," he said. "You deserve better."

"I've never found anyone better," she said. "So stop it."

Still, there was something he had to see. He made the appointment and came a half hour early. He waited in the absurdly plush foyer of Tsukiyono Castle until Rex stepped out, and then took the winding path upstairs he'd remembered from so many years ago. He was halfway to the rooms-- Mamoru had redone things, they'd told him, there was an apartment in the monstrosity now-- when a voice from the shadows called his name.

"Uncle Ran," the girl repeated when he stopped in shock. "You need to go back to the office. Nagi-nii's coming in in five minutes. If he finds you...."

He looked at her. She seemed tall for ten, and had Aya's grace and pretty smile. She wasn't wearing glasses, but he could see who she looked like. Half Aya, half....

Aya hadn't known who'd raped her. But it was clear on the little girl's face.

"You shouldn't be wandering around here," he said.

"I'm fine," she answered. "Please go back to the office. I'll talk to you later, I promise."

He watched her walk away, blue and white school uniform, familiar red hair.

Rex seemed not at all surprised when he returned to the foyer.

"You're not concerned at all, are you," Aya said, half-impressed, half-terrified.

Mamoru shook his head. "We'll negotiate this. They should have been more flexible when it came to Ken-kun, or they wouldn't have lost two assets." He smiled. "Not that I regret their choice, exactly."

"Don't look so goddamned smug," Nagi snapped from his position in the corner of the office. "Not everything goes just as you plan it."

"What?" Mamoru said, throwing up the challenge. "You're afraid big, bad Side B might come to get us?"

Nagi's laugh was sharp as a knife as he waved his objection away. "So what are you going to do with yourself, Fujimiya-san?"

"I'm not sure," he said, trying not to let the question grate. "I can work in construction again, for a while. I was thinking about getting my teaching certificate."

"History?" Mamoru asked, and he nodded.

"Where are you staying?" Nagi asked. "We'll set up surveillance for the time being. We have enough connections that we'll know if Side B makes a move, but it doesn't hurt to be careful."

"I've had a hotel room but I'm checking out today. I've been...."

Suddenly he had both of their attention in full.

Damn them. "...I've been staying with Sakura-chan at the flower shop."

That time Mamoru looked so smug even Ran was pleased when Nagi telepathically rapped him in the back of the head. "Go take care of things," Mamoru told him, trying not to laugh.

"I can take care of things from here," Nagi said, getting up.

"Then just go," Mamoru said, and Nagi reached out and mussed his hair before he walked out of the office.

Mamoru waited until the office door clicked shut to say, "Are you really all right, Aya-kun?"

He nodded. "I'm going to go back to Ran," he said. "For Aya's sake."

Mamoru nodded. "Ran-kun," he said, and the smile he was trying to suppress could've lit up cities.

"How's Ken?"

Mamoru's smugness disappeared. "He has good days," he said. "And he has bad days. The kids help. He's on some medication that seems to help. We do what we can. Nagi does better with him than I do, most of the time. I don't know if it's the things they have in common, or just that Ken-kun doesn't need to hide from him the way he does me."

Ran nodded. That was probably as well as Ken was going to do, at least for a while. "And Ran-chan?"

"She's well," Mamoru said. If he was surprised by the question, he gave no indication. "It was...difficult when I got shot, but she seems to have overcome it. And her grades never went down-- she's brilliant. Like her uncle."

"Like her mother," Ran corrected.

"I never worked with her mother," Mamoru said wryly.

Ran looked at the top of Mamoru's desk for a minute. "Do you ever feel like you don't deserve it? Like you don't deserve her?"

"I know I don't." He sighed. "And...Ran-kun?"

"Hn?"

"We are prepared to deal with her father. I can't promise to protect you-- or her-- if you take steps without our knowledge or authorization. I hope that is clear." His face was unexpectedly hard. "Nagi-kun...is very protective of her. As long as she is under this roof, I can promise you she will be safe."

That didn't answer everything. "Her name?"

"She had to have someone's name, Ran-kun. And there's no name that will keep her safer. Your sister chose her given name." Mamoru's face was harder than Ran had ever seen it. There was no room for debate here; just the choice to fight.

Ran sighed. He wanted to take her away, to somewhere--

Somewhere safe? Could he even find somewhere safe-- from Kritiker, from them, from Eszett if they ever came calling?

Could they?

"You were never permanently transferred to Side B anyway," Nagi said. "Kritiker's just playing games."

"Are they concerned about you acting without their authorization?"

"They should be," Nagi said, "if they have half a brain." His fingers flew over the keyboard. "We've been working under their radar for years, transferring assets, moving operators to the kill column when they've just been retired."

Ran tried not to look shocked.

"We don't trust them," Nagi said flatly. "They don't trust us. My guess is they stopped trusting us when Mamoru went off the reservation against his grandfather's orders, and he started hating them when they sent Crashers in."

"Are Crashers--"

"Still in play," Nagi answered. He hit the return key with a decisive click. "I can pass a message to Knight. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you."

"I think I'm going to marry Sakura," Ran said. "I'm not sure he would."

Nagi's laugh was sharp and viciously satisfied. "I'd like to know who the fuck he thinks he is," he said, as the printer whirred to life. "There. It's done. I'll fax a hard copy later so they can't pretend they didn't get it."

"What do you think will happen?" Ran asked. "Honestly."

"Not sure," Nagi said. "They're pretty sick of dealing with us; I wouldn't be surprised if we just get a nasty note severing our 'once productive' relationship. We can handle them, anyway."

"My sister--"

"Already guarded," Nagi said. "No talents on her, but good people. We try to keep that end of things as quiet as possible. You know I can't make promises, but I don't think they have anything that can touch what we have."

Ran nodded. "All right," he said. "That's the other reason Ken gets along with you, isn't it?"

Nagi looked confused.

"You won't lie to him to make him happy."

Nagi's eyes flitted to the desk for a moment, and then back to Ran. "Mamoru thinks we should all be happy," he said. "Someday maybe he'll learn that isn't possible."

"We don't deserve to be happy."

"Fuck that," Nagi said.

Ran was sitting on the front steps of the mansion waiting for them. Nagi tensed when he saw her. "Ran-chan--"

"I want to talk to him," she told Nagi. "Please?"

"All right," he said, with the long-suffering attitude of a parent. "But I'm not turning off the surveillance cameras."

She rolled her eyes, but he left. "He won't," she said to Ran. "So don't try anything."

Her seriousness reminded him of Aya as a child. "All right," he promised, and sat down on the steps next to her.

"You look like my mother. She's told me a lot about you," she said. "She's nice. I like her. I like things the way they are."

Couldn't tell Nagi helped raise you, he thought wryly. "I understand."

"Good," she said, grinning. "I thought you would."

Her expression was familiar; it wasn't Aya's. "Thought, or knew?"

She shrugged and got up. "Little of both. I'll be seeing you, Uncle."

"I'll be seeing you," he said, as she walked away.

Full index of the Ranverse here.