JE/KAT-TUN- "Faith to Hold on To"
Title: Faith to Hold on To
Universe: JE/ KAT-TUN (Government Agent AU)
Theme/Topic: KAT-TUN Backstory
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: KAT-TUN (appearances by NewS and Arashi members)
Warnings/Spoilers: AU, OOC, stupidity. Especially with the Arashi members, as I know LITTLE TO NOTHING ABOUT THEM. They’re just meat puppets here, really. XD
Word Count: 4,650
Summary: In the universe related to “To Serve and Protect,” “Waiting to Come Home,” “Guardian Spirits,” “Strength, Weakness,” and “This is Our Beginning”- The rise and fall of KAT-TUN, the betrayal of NEWS, and hope for a brighter future for everyone.
Dedication: cynicalism- thanks again for the upload!
A/N: Wasn’t planning on doing this today but I figured I might as well whip it up while waiting for the handyman to show (WHICH HE NEVER DID ARGH). And as per cynicalism’s request, this idea totally sprang up after watching the episode of Onigokko she uploaded for me, specifically regarding the part where a NewS member is betrayed and thus doomed. Also, sorry this isn’t like, an epic almost-13,000 words like the NewS backstory; I kind of got lazy with KT and clearly my biases are showing. Hope it’s enjoyable either way. -_-;;
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
He is just back from the hospital and barely one foot into the office when Kame is on him, coolly brandishing a neatly typed, meticulously annotated document that Jin suspects is his formal reprimand for this morning’s disastrous mission. He’s right; labeled inside- step-by-step, minute-by-minute-are all of the things he did wrong earlier today.
He doesn’t need to read any of it to know what it all means in sum; Kame blames him for the whole thing going south.
“I’m submitting this to Administrator Imai at five,” Kame confirms right off the bat, and doesn’t ask about how Jin feels or if he needs to sit down after having his chest slashed open earlier today.
Jin has noticed how, over the last few years, Kame has become all business and not much of anything else.
He forces a smile, not to be friendly but because he knows it pisses Kame off. “I’m fine,” he says brightly, and closes the document without seeing it, “thanks for asking. It was only thirty five stitches. My chest burns but I came back because I thought I’d do some paperwork.”
Kame sighs. “Of course you’re fine; the doctor said you would be.” He indicates the file again, growing impatient with Jin’s stalling. “I wanted to give you a copy so you’d know exactly why you’re being suspended for the next week and a half. I thought it was only fair to both of us.”
Jin feels something cold and angry sluice through him at Kame’s brusque manner, at the way he writes off his own team member just like that. He hands the file back. “I know I was right,” he says stubbornly. “Even if she was already… I know it was the right thing to do.”
“I’m not discussing this with you right here,” Kame murmurs helplessly, and takes back his document from Jin in a resigned sort of way. His attempt at goodwill is being thoroughly rejected and there’s nothing he can do about it. “You disobeyed orders and you’re getting suspended. End of story. If you want to file your own complaint against me that’s fine; you know how to format the paperwork and who to submit it to.”
Jin's jaw twitches. “I’d rather just yell, really.”
“Don’t make idiots out of both of us in the middle of the hallway like that. Besides, you have to leave; you’re suspended,” Kame tells him with an air of deadly calm. Before Jin can reply, he promptly turns around marches back towards his office.
Jin frowns. “Even if I knew!” he shouts after him defiantly, and doesn’t care who hears. “Even if I’d already known she was dead at that moment, I still would have tried to save her anyway! I would have done the exact same thing even if I’d known; I would have let him go a thousand times so I could get to her even after she was gone!”
He believes it too; even if his actions had cost them the arrest, even if it had put one small black mark on their unit’s perfect record, Jin doesn’t care. Kame is the one in the unit who worries about numbers and statistics and being the best to their superiors, not Jin.
Jin had just wanted to save somebody.
“Kame,” he tries again, quieter now, “she needed us.”
Kame doesn’t even turn around.
He simply slides into his office wordlessly and shuts the door behind him, leaving Jin standing alone in the hallway with a helpless feeling of frustration gathering deep in his chest.
Silence.
Jin scowls and turns around feeling disgusted with the world; he tells himself he doesn’t need this right now. Not after what he had to see today.
On his way out he tells Koki he’s taking the rest of the day off because if he stays any longer he might end up throwing a chair through Kame’s office window.
“That’s bullet proof glass, genius,” is all Koki has to say about it. “Besides, aren’t you suspended? You couldn’t stay to work even if you weren’t pissed off.”
Jin laughs mirthlessly at his teammate’s logic and stomps into the elevator feeling just a little bit overwhelmed and a lot disappointed.
He hates that being the most successful unit in the agency also means forgetting the reasons why they do this in the first place.
~~~~~
“You should have followed orders,” Yamapi tells him later that evening, when the younger agent is over making sure Jin is resting properly after his flesh-to-blade meeting with his target’s knife.
Jin sputters, not expecting Pi to side with Kame. “But…”
Yamapi cuts off his complaints with a telling look. “But I also think that Kamenashi-kun shouldn’t issue orders that will hurt the hearts of any of his members,” he adds, gently. “Being a bridge between the rules and your nakama is the job of a leader.”
Jin sighs. “He was wrong. I know he was, Pi. If we aren’t here to save people then what are we for?”
Yamapi pats him. “We’re here to save people, ne. That’s what I really believe.” Pause. “But… sometimes we can’t save everyone.”
“So then what?”
The look on Yamapi’s face when he answers seems far off, like he’s in a different time and place altogether. “We do what we can and hope for the best.”
Jin wrinkles his nose. “You sound like Koyama.”
Yamapi smiles back crookedly. “There are worse people to sound like.”
“Pi…”
“Don’t think about it,” Yamapi tells him firmly, gently. “Rest and get better these next ten days and come back to work strong. Believe that everyone on every team is doing his or her best every day. Even Kame.”
Jin frowns but knows that his best friend is right, knows that maybe he doesn’t understand all of the things Kame has to take into consideration as a team leader and that he never will. But even still, part of him aches knowing that in a split second decision, Kame is willing to sacrifice an innocent person for the sake of catching someone bad.
Don’t get him wrong; Jin full heartedly believes in the motto his team stands by. Their most important job is to stop criminals.
But he only believes in it because of the motto Yamapi’s team lives by: justice has no meaning if there is no life for it to protect.
He goes to sleep that night hoping that part of Kame-even a small one-feels the same.
~~~~~
“I don’t care about our reputation. I don’t care about how we look to the rest of the agency. I just want to catch bad guys!”
Kame’s face is icy, eyebrows furrowed and lips tight. “We get the cases that we do-the big cases with the big bad guys-because of our reputation. They won’t trust a team that doesn’t stand up to its name with the cases that are worth investigating. And that’s why we have to maintain a certain level of reputability in front of our superiors; so they know we’re serious about our jobs. That way they will trust us with important cases.”
Jin glares right back, feels himself on the brink of some sort of explosion. “I don’t care about big cases or small cases! If I catch a purse snatcher that’s fine; if I save the Prime Minister that’s fine too!”
Kame looks like he has a headache. “Go home and change into something respectable, Akanishi.”
Jin leaves the office angry; he longs for their less famous, more complicated past.
~~~~~
In years before, while his best friend was on the fast track to instant success, Jin was on the slow track to obscurity.
In West Tokyo under Domoto Koichi and Domoto Tsuyoshi, KAT-TUN was formed with the leftover candidates that Takizawa didn’t pick for his NEWS project; KAT-TUN was never the best of the best but rather, the second best of the best and below.
A team leader who had originally wanted to be an undercover agent, a hacker whose high scores at the academy were blown out of the water by a kid barely out of diapers, a ground agent who didn’t break any records while in training, a sniper without the same kind of street credibility Eito members garnered in their Osaka academy days, an explosives expert that looks so nervous and horrible while he’s defusing bombs that anyone watching him work will instinctively believe they are all going to die.
And to top it all off, an undercover agent who doesn’t respond well to authority.
Koichi had been pleased with how clever their acronym was as he’d put them together; a letter for their unit name each and a letter for each of their names. “A double threat; NEWS doesn’t have that,” he’d laughed, and they’d laughed alongside him because it had been funny back then.
Jin remembers it as a time where the six of them could learn-and grow-without the pressures of success constantly haunting them.
It had been a time when being a little unsure was okay; they were all in this together.
“Well, I don’t really know if I’m cut out to be a leader,” Kame had admitted the first day, “But when I told them I wanted to be an undercover agent they said I wouldn’t ever be able to scare anyone into believing I was a bad guy. So they gave me this job instead.”
He’d laughed at the joke then, all by himself, and it had been awkward and horrible.
“But yeah,” he’d managed, after he’d realized he was the only one laughing, “Let’s um, let’s do our best.”
Jin remembers feeling a strange warmth at that hopeless display of weakness. It had made him-and the others, he suspects-want to try hard, if only because it was obvious that Kame needed all the help he could get just to survive in this world.
Sometimes, when he called Yamapi at night to ask how things were going with him over on the East side, Jin felt a little relieved to hear that of the two teams, his seemed to be the one that was doing the best.
~~~~~
Nowadays it feels like the situations are flipped around; he doesn’t get what happened all of a sudden, how that awkward, clumsy Kame who they’d all wanted to support had turned into such a cold professional.
Sometimes Jin thinks they should have let him become an undercover agent after all; his fake smiles are better than Jin’s now.
“Tsubasa,” he whines to his administrator one day at the water cooler, “Tsubasa would it be impossible for me to transfer to Pi’s team?”
Tsubasa smiles wryly and gets his water before responding. “Of course it’s impossible,” he tells Jin patiently, “KT-TUN just isn’t attractive to say at all and we don’t have any more readily available vowels in the agency just yet.”
Jin groans at the older man’s mirth and trudges back to his desk.
~~~~~
One afternoon, after getting into an argument with his teammates about the particulars of a case report-Koki insists that Jin had gone right when Jin is 100% he had gone left-the office begins to buzz with a nervous kind of fear.
“A storm’s coming,” Ueda reports, after reading one of the coded e-mails Tegoshi sometimes sends him when the kid is bored and trolling the agency intranet for files to hack as a “security test.”
Talk of a storm coming in the office means one thing and one thing only; ARASHI is on its way downstairs.
Officially known as the Agency Regulations Administrators for Special Hearing Inquiries, ARASHI are the head investigators for the Internal Affairs department and subsequently, the number one group any agent-whether he likes the individual ARASHI members or not-doesn’t want to see during working hours.
“Shit,” Koki curses, when he hears Ueda’s announcement. “I hope this isn’t about the printer I uh, borrowed last weekend.”
Kame throws him a withering look. “It better not be.” He looks at his watch. “Alright, we’re done wasting time. We’ll say that Jin went right since Koki’s vantage was better and leave it at that. The report’s due in an hour.”
Jin sputters. “Koki had a better vantage but I was the one who moved!”
“The report is due in an hour,” Kame repeats, and begins packing up his papers.
When Jin sticks his tongue out at him, the only one who notices is Nakamaru.
~~~~~
Yamapi is at his desk peacefully wrapping up the last of the files regarding the next trial date he has to testify on when his cell phone rings; he blinks, looks down at the display, and sees Tegoshi’s name.
He picks up.
“Hello? Tegoshi?”
“Ano,” Tegoshi begins, and the reception is a bit staticky because Yamapi knows the young agent is working with Massu somewhere in the mountains right now.
“What’s wrong?” Yamapi asks, and immediately knows that when he can’t hear Tegoshi’s smile in his voice it means that something isn’t right.
“I know leader said I shouldn’t stick my nose around in other people’s business when I’m bored but…”
Yamapi sighs. “Tegoshi,” he begins, patiently, “hacking the files of our targets is your job, but hacking the files of your coworkers is no good, isn’t it?”
Tegoshi fidgets; Yamapi can hear him shuffling the phone to his other side as he tucks locks of hair behind his ears. “Well yeah, but since Yamashita-kun specifically said not to poke around in other people’s business I thought it meant it was okay to poke into any business about NEWS, ne.”
Yamapi blinks. “Wait, so you…”
“Un. A few inter-agency E-mails. I read our names. And Akanishi’s name, for some reason.”
“What’s going on?”
Tegoshi swallows. “Leader, a storm is coming.”
Yamapi’s eyebrows jump when he hears the news. “Huh.”
~~~~~
Thankfully the storm turns out to be a category two instead of a category five; Agents Matsumoto and Sakurai are the only ones sent and when they arrive at Yamapi’s door Pi has already had a chance to calm down and properly prepare to meet them.
He’s been expecting them for a while now.
“Ah, so it was you two who were supposed to show up today, ne,” Pi greets, and offers them both coffee.
Sho whistles appreciatively at the admission. “That little kid of yours is good,” he says, sounding fonder of Tegoshi’s snooping habits than annoyed by them despite the nature of his job.
Yamapi chuckles back. “All of my men are good, ne.”
Matsumoto grabs one of Yamapi’s paperweights and starts fidgeting with it absently. “Good or not, two of your men are also currently incapacitated, aren’t they?” he points out, stepping all over sensitive wounds unapologetically. He doesn’t stop playing with Pi’s paperweight as he talks.
Yamapi visibly stiffens when he hears the jab, though his face betrays nothing. “That,” he tells Matsumoto calmly, “is not because they did anything wrong.”
And there is the crux of the matter, the cue Matsumoto has been waiting for.
Jun smiles secretively, putting the paperweight down and leaning forward until he is almost nose to nose with Yamashita. “Maybe it wasn’t your men, but we have some pretty solid information that says someone did do something wrong that day,” he whispers around his grin, like this is a fun conspiracy for just he and Pi.
Yamapi doesn’t react; he isn’t sure how to. “What are you saying?”
Sho is the one who clarifies, pushing aside all of Matsumoto’s showy ambiguity and getting straight to the matter. “Yamapi,” he says quietly, “would you like to find out who’s really responsible for Uchi-kun and Kusano-kun’s injuries?”
To Matsumoto’s delight, Yamapi finally reacts.
~~~~~
“A leak?” Yamapi murmurs, after they explain what they mean. He doesn’t want to believe it, doesn’t want to think that someone who is in this agency, who has gone through all the same trials and tribulations and suffering that the rest of them have, would betray one of his own just like that.
“A leak,” Matsumoto confirms. “We made the connection after poring over Kato, Kusano, Masuda, Koyama, and Tegoshi’s reports; in the week before the incident, all of them write about having spent time with the same person. Mostly offhanded remarks, but we’ve also got confirmation from other agents now.”
Yamapi purses his lips. “And you think what happened has to be this person’s fault?” He’s skeptical, and rightfully so. “He’s just a junior agent, ne. How would he have been able to make these sorts of connections in any crime syndicate?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Sho admits. “That’s why we’re here to see you.”
“Why do you need to see me? If you have the proof than all you have to do is arrest him and interrogate him, right?”
“We want whoever he’s working for too,” Sho tells him. “And for that, we have a mission that goes live next week.”
Yamapi isn’t sure he likes the sound of that. “A mission?”
Matsumoto nods. “Undercover. After his unit was disbanded last year this agent has been requesting to leave the agency on the clock every month. He wants to take part in the big federal exchange program with the American government that begins next week. We’ve since okayed him to go.”
Yamapi isn’t sure he follows the logic behind that. “Why would you let him leave the country if he’s a threat to our interests?”
“Because he’s been so desperate to get to America for the past six months that we think whoever he has ties to on the other side might be over there. This is definitely part of something bigger. We think the exchange with the FBI is just a cover for him to meet with whoever it is he’s really working for. This could become a matter of international security.”
“The Americans,” Yamapi realizes.
“Exactly. And as such, we’re arranging some company for him; this year Japan is sending two agents to study abroad with the FBI. One of which is a known loose cannon.”
A moment.
And then Yamapi sighs, rubs his temples. “Akanishi,” he breathes, finally getting the connection between NEWS and Jin Tegoshi had been talking about earlier.
Sho and Jun exchange knowing looks when the KAT-TUN member’s name comes up. “That kid of yours,” Jun marvels, “can’t get anything past him, huh?”
Yamapi smiles bitterly. “Not a thing.”
~~~~~
When Jin is called into Yamapi’s office ten minutes later, he can’t believe his ears.
“Why me?” he asks. “Why not Kato-kun?”
“Jin’s English is horrible,” Yamapi agrees.
Jin frowns at him. “Not part of my argument, thanks.”
“But it’s true. Shige’s English is ten times better than yours, ne.”
Matsumoto looks impatient with the two of them. “Look, we’re sending Akanishi because everyone and their mother knows that he fights with Kamenashi like they’re high school girls from different cliques. We need to make it look like his going to America is an attempt to sever all connections with the rest of KAT-TUN. Which, if you don’t mind me saying, isn’t a hard thing to believe. All we’d have to do after that is show you and Yamashita fighting about you leaving to America and that’s it; all your closest ties to this agency are gone.”
Jin glares.
Matsumoto ignores him. “If our target believes that Akanishi is on the outs of the agency too, then he might be more inclined to trust him. Even…get him in on the ground floor maybe. You know, if Akanishi doesn’t fuck up.” The older agent smirks at the thought.
Jin glowers back, and Yamapi almost forgot how horrible it is to be in the same room with these two at the same time.
Sho interrupts before it gets ugly though; even if Ohno-kun is the leader there’s a reason why out of everyone in ARASHI, people are always the most wary of Agent Sakurai.
“Look, it doesn’t make sense to send Kato-kun because no one would believe NEWS suddenly ousted him given Koyama’s penchant for shouting how much you all love each other from the rooftops. With Akanishi it’s clean and easy because we’ve already got the history built in from reality. KAT-TUN’s been fighting pretty consistently since they got to this side of Tokyo. No one would think twice if we said one of them is leaving suddenly.”
Jin moves to protest, but is cut off by a look from Sho. “Everyone knows,” he says. “Internal Affairs especially.”
Jin’s jaw snaps shut.
Yamapi has a headache. “Shouldn’t Kamenashi-kun be here to hear this as well, then?”
The two ARASHI members share a look. Matsumoto almost seems gleeful when he turns back to Yamapi and says, “Nope!”
~~~~~
When Jin discovers that the rest of his team isn’t going to know anything about why he is suddenly leaving them, he realizes that part of him doesn’t want to go. Somehow, it feels like a deception that will destroy the last tentative piece of tinder holding the bridge of their team bonds together.
When he returns to his office after the meeting is over and Kame has sent a memo indicating all of the paperwork Jin is late in submitting, Jin realizes that this isn’t the same team that needed him all those years ago. He thinks that maybe something that is falling apart already can be sacrificed for something that can still be saved.
Matsumoto had been the one to say it; “If you crack this case it might clear up all that bad air around NEWS’s last mission,” he’d murmured, dangling that carrot shamelessly in front of Jin and Pi just like that.
“You mean,” Yamapi started, sounding hopeful for a moment, completely unguarded, “my team could…”
“It might speed up the investigation on our end,” Sho had confirmed, “And we can reinstate NEWS that much faster.”
Jin goes home that night and starts to pack for America.
~~~~~
The day before he leaves he marches into the office and puts on his cheeriest cheer face, the one that he uses with all of his targets and that never fails to charm the pants off of them.
He gives his best performance to date that afternoon and can’t help but hope that one of them-any of them-will see right through it.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning!” he chirps.
A moment.
“You can’t sleep in the office,” Nakamaru begins, “Isn’t that against regulations?”
Jin sighs. “No. Tomorrow, I’m leaving for America.”
“I hope you at least gave Kame your vacation notice a month in advance like you’re supposed to before you bought the tickets,” Ueda sighs, and sounds like even though he’s hoping, he’s not expecting.
Jin stomps his foot. “It’s not a vacation!”
“Right, you’re going over there so you can work hard as an FBI, right?” Koki snorts.
Jin stops, stares. How did Koki know? Is there already a leak about that too?
“Have fun as a Female Body Inspector,” the sniper finishes, and kicks back in his chair. “You know, on your vacation.”
Jin sighs. “It’s not a vacation.”
“Sure,” they say, and share knowing looks.
Jin gives up and trudges down the hall to go tell Kame.
~~~~~
The rest of the group starts to realize that maybe it isn’t a vacation when they hear Kame’s raised voice coming from his office.
What’s abnormal about it is that Kame’s raised voice is not accompanied by Jin’s.
Something about that seems weird.
~~~~~
The rest of KAT-TUN finally realizes for a fact that it isn’t a vacation when, after lunch, Yamapi and Jin start shouting at each other in the hallways.
“How can you just leave like this?” Yamapi complains, “And you don’t tell me until the day before?”
“I just decided! Can’t you be happy for me?” Jin shrieks. “You’re just like Kame!”
Yamapi is stunned into silence. Then, “Fine. Have fun in America. Stay there for all I care,” he murmurs, before storming into his office and slamming the door behind him.
“Oh shit,” Nakamaru says to himself, when he gets it. “He really isn’t going on vacation.”
~~~~~
The next day Jin boards the plane with his kouhai and his kouhai alone; there is no one else there to see him off, no smiling, waving people or cheerful bon voyage signs. Just strangers milling around a crowded airport hoping they get through security without being searched.
It’s painful but expected; Jin tells himself that it’s all part of the job and that Ryo-chan and Pi would both be here if they could be, would smile and wish him luck and tell him to work hard and catch the bad guys.
“No one came, huh?” the younger agent beside him asks when he notices Jin’s gaze drifting over his shoulder every once in a while.
Jin shrugs. “I don’t need them and they don’t need me.”
His companion smiles. “I know what you mean.”
Jin boards the plane without another backwards glance and knows that as painful as this all is, this part is really the easy part.
The hard part won’t be until after he comes back.
~~~~~
When his plane takes off he doesn’t know that Nakamaru’s car is parked in the airport parking lot, just shy of the runway.
“That’s his plane,” the explosives expert says, and squints up into the sky as Jin’s aircraft rises up and heads east. “He’s going to Los Angeles.”
Koki tries to look bored. “Yeah, well. Good riddance. I call his desk; I’ve wanted a window cubicle for forever now.”
“It’s great to hear your point of view on that matter,” Junno chortles, and earns himself a smack on the head.
After the plane is out of sight Nakamaru gets back into the driver’s seat and starts the engine again. “For some reason,” he says, “I feel like eating hamburgers.”
“I hope he has fun in America,” Junno chirps randomly as they pull out of the parking lot. “I bet the hamburgers there are really good.”
“I don’t,” Koki sulks. “And there’s nothing wrong with the hamburgers here, moron! They’re delicious!”
Ueda drowns all of them out by turning up the volume on his iPod.
~~~~~
On the other side of the runway, Yamapi and Ryo silently watch the sky even when they can’t see Jin’s plane in it anymore.
“You aren’t really mad,” Ryo observes, with a sideways look at his team leader.
“No,” Yamapi admits, because Ryo notices everything.
“And he doesn’t really want to go,” Ryo adds, derisively. “What a piss poor undercover agent; it’s written all over his face.”
Yamapi smiles a little. “Yeah.”
They stand like that in silence for a little while longer, up until the sun starts to dip down into the horizon behind them.
Ryo shoves his hands into his pockets as the late-autumn wind blows through the silent airfield, brow furrowed in thought. “I hope he knows that when he comes back, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
Yamapi knows.
But he also knows something else too, from his own experience.
“I think,” he says, wisely, “that you have to not be able to have something for a while to be able to fully appreciate it once you get it back.”
Ryo blinks. “Are you drunk?”
Yamapi chuckles. “I just know that when we finally get to come back, NEWS will be stronger than it used to be. Maybe it will be the same for KAT-TUN too.”
Silence.
Then, an embarrassed snort. “Don’t compare us to those morons, we’re nothing alike,” Ryo complains. “And let’s get out of here, it’s freezing.”
Yamapi laughs and obediently climbs back into the car.
He eyes the empty eastern sky in the rearview mirror as they leave the airport and believes that Jin will come back soon; he knows that he’ll be stronger when he does.
In the meantime, he hopes that KAT-TUN will wait for him.
END
EDITS PLZ.
Universe: JE/ KAT-TUN (Government Agent AU)
Theme/Topic: KAT-TUN Backstory
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: KAT-TUN (appearances by NewS and Arashi members)
Warnings/Spoilers: AU, OOC, stupidity. Especially with the Arashi members, as I know LITTLE TO NOTHING ABOUT THEM. They’re just meat puppets here, really. XD
Word Count: 4,650
Summary: In the universe related to “To Serve and Protect,” “Waiting to Come Home,” “Guardian Spirits,” “Strength, Weakness,” and “This is Our Beginning”- The rise and fall of KAT-TUN, the betrayal of NEWS, and hope for a brighter future for everyone.
Dedication: cynicalism- thanks again for the upload!
A/N: Wasn’t planning on doing this today but I figured I might as well whip it up while waiting for the handyman to show (WHICH HE NEVER DID ARGH). And as per cynicalism’s request, this idea totally sprang up after watching the episode of Onigokko she uploaded for me, specifically regarding the part where a NewS member is betrayed and thus doomed. Also, sorry this isn’t like, an epic almost-13,000 words like the NewS backstory; I kind of got lazy with KT and clearly my biases are showing. Hope it’s enjoyable either way. -_-;;
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
He is just back from the hospital and barely one foot into the office when Kame is on him, coolly brandishing a neatly typed, meticulously annotated document that Jin suspects is his formal reprimand for this morning’s disastrous mission. He’s right; labeled inside- step-by-step, minute-by-minute-are all of the things he did wrong earlier today.
He doesn’t need to read any of it to know what it all means in sum; Kame blames him for the whole thing going south.
“I’m submitting this to Administrator Imai at five,” Kame confirms right off the bat, and doesn’t ask about how Jin feels or if he needs to sit down after having his chest slashed open earlier today.
Jin has noticed how, over the last few years, Kame has become all business and not much of anything else.
He forces a smile, not to be friendly but because he knows it pisses Kame off. “I’m fine,” he says brightly, and closes the document without seeing it, “thanks for asking. It was only thirty five stitches. My chest burns but I came back because I thought I’d do some paperwork.”
Kame sighs. “Of course you’re fine; the doctor said you would be.” He indicates the file again, growing impatient with Jin’s stalling. “I wanted to give you a copy so you’d know exactly why you’re being suspended for the next week and a half. I thought it was only fair to both of us.”
Jin feels something cold and angry sluice through him at Kame’s brusque manner, at the way he writes off his own team member just like that. He hands the file back. “I know I was right,” he says stubbornly. “Even if she was already… I know it was the right thing to do.”
“I’m not discussing this with you right here,” Kame murmurs helplessly, and takes back his document from Jin in a resigned sort of way. His attempt at goodwill is being thoroughly rejected and there’s nothing he can do about it. “You disobeyed orders and you’re getting suspended. End of story. If you want to file your own complaint against me that’s fine; you know how to format the paperwork and who to submit it to.”
Jin's jaw twitches. “I’d rather just yell, really.”
“Don’t make idiots out of both of us in the middle of the hallway like that. Besides, you have to leave; you’re suspended,” Kame tells him with an air of deadly calm. Before Jin can reply, he promptly turns around marches back towards his office.
Jin frowns. “Even if I knew!” he shouts after him defiantly, and doesn’t care who hears. “Even if I’d already known she was dead at that moment, I still would have tried to save her anyway! I would have done the exact same thing even if I’d known; I would have let him go a thousand times so I could get to her even after she was gone!”
He believes it too; even if his actions had cost them the arrest, even if it had put one small black mark on their unit’s perfect record, Jin doesn’t care. Kame is the one in the unit who worries about numbers and statistics and being the best to their superiors, not Jin.
Jin had just wanted to save somebody.
“Kame,” he tries again, quieter now, “she needed us.”
Kame doesn’t even turn around.
He simply slides into his office wordlessly and shuts the door behind him, leaving Jin standing alone in the hallway with a helpless feeling of frustration gathering deep in his chest.
Silence.
Jin scowls and turns around feeling disgusted with the world; he tells himself he doesn’t need this right now. Not after what he had to see today.
On his way out he tells Koki he’s taking the rest of the day off because if he stays any longer he might end up throwing a chair through Kame’s office window.
“That’s bullet proof glass, genius,” is all Koki has to say about it. “Besides, aren’t you suspended? You couldn’t stay to work even if you weren’t pissed off.”
Jin laughs mirthlessly at his teammate’s logic and stomps into the elevator feeling just a little bit overwhelmed and a lot disappointed.
He hates that being the most successful unit in the agency also means forgetting the reasons why they do this in the first place.
~~~~~
“You should have followed orders,” Yamapi tells him later that evening, when the younger agent is over making sure Jin is resting properly after his flesh-to-blade meeting with his target’s knife.
Jin sputters, not expecting Pi to side with Kame. “But…”
Yamapi cuts off his complaints with a telling look. “But I also think that Kamenashi-kun shouldn’t issue orders that will hurt the hearts of any of his members,” he adds, gently. “Being a bridge between the rules and your nakama is the job of a leader.”
Jin sighs. “He was wrong. I know he was, Pi. If we aren’t here to save people then what are we for?”
Yamapi pats him. “We’re here to save people, ne. That’s what I really believe.” Pause. “But… sometimes we can’t save everyone.”
“So then what?”
The look on Yamapi’s face when he answers seems far off, like he’s in a different time and place altogether. “We do what we can and hope for the best.”
Jin wrinkles his nose. “You sound like Koyama.”
Yamapi smiles back crookedly. “There are worse people to sound like.”
“Pi…”
“Don’t think about it,” Yamapi tells him firmly, gently. “Rest and get better these next ten days and come back to work strong. Believe that everyone on every team is doing his or her best every day. Even Kame.”
Jin frowns but knows that his best friend is right, knows that maybe he doesn’t understand all of the things Kame has to take into consideration as a team leader and that he never will. But even still, part of him aches knowing that in a split second decision, Kame is willing to sacrifice an innocent person for the sake of catching someone bad.
Don’t get him wrong; Jin full heartedly believes in the motto his team stands by. Their most important job is to stop criminals.
But he only believes in it because of the motto Yamapi’s team lives by: justice has no meaning if there is no life for it to protect.
He goes to sleep that night hoping that part of Kame-even a small one-feels the same.
~~~~~
“I don’t care about our reputation. I don’t care about how we look to the rest of the agency. I just want to catch bad guys!”
Kame’s face is icy, eyebrows furrowed and lips tight. “We get the cases that we do-the big cases with the big bad guys-because of our reputation. They won’t trust a team that doesn’t stand up to its name with the cases that are worth investigating. And that’s why we have to maintain a certain level of reputability in front of our superiors; so they know we’re serious about our jobs. That way they will trust us with important cases.”
Jin glares right back, feels himself on the brink of some sort of explosion. “I don’t care about big cases or small cases! If I catch a purse snatcher that’s fine; if I save the Prime Minister that’s fine too!”
Kame looks like he has a headache. “Go home and change into something respectable, Akanishi.”
Jin leaves the office angry; he longs for their less famous, more complicated past.
~~~~~
In years before, while his best friend was on the fast track to instant success, Jin was on the slow track to obscurity.
In West Tokyo under Domoto Koichi and Domoto Tsuyoshi, KAT-TUN was formed with the leftover candidates that Takizawa didn’t pick for his NEWS project; KAT-TUN was never the best of the best but rather, the second best of the best and below.
A team leader who had originally wanted to be an undercover agent, a hacker whose high scores at the academy were blown out of the water by a kid barely out of diapers, a ground agent who didn’t break any records while in training, a sniper without the same kind of street credibility Eito members garnered in their Osaka academy days, an explosives expert that looks so nervous and horrible while he’s defusing bombs that anyone watching him work will instinctively believe they are all going to die.
And to top it all off, an undercover agent who doesn’t respond well to authority.
Koichi had been pleased with how clever their acronym was as he’d put them together; a letter for their unit name each and a letter for each of their names. “A double threat; NEWS doesn’t have that,” he’d laughed, and they’d laughed alongside him because it had been funny back then.
Jin remembers it as a time where the six of them could learn-and grow-without the pressures of success constantly haunting them.
It had been a time when being a little unsure was okay; they were all in this together.
“Well, I don’t really know if I’m cut out to be a leader,” Kame had admitted the first day, “But when I told them I wanted to be an undercover agent they said I wouldn’t ever be able to scare anyone into believing I was a bad guy. So they gave me this job instead.”
He’d laughed at the joke then, all by himself, and it had been awkward and horrible.
“But yeah,” he’d managed, after he’d realized he was the only one laughing, “Let’s um, let’s do our best.”
Jin remembers feeling a strange warmth at that hopeless display of weakness. It had made him-and the others, he suspects-want to try hard, if only because it was obvious that Kame needed all the help he could get just to survive in this world.
Sometimes, when he called Yamapi at night to ask how things were going with him over on the East side, Jin felt a little relieved to hear that of the two teams, his seemed to be the one that was doing the best.
~~~~~
Nowadays it feels like the situations are flipped around; he doesn’t get what happened all of a sudden, how that awkward, clumsy Kame who they’d all wanted to support had turned into such a cold professional.
Sometimes Jin thinks they should have let him become an undercover agent after all; his fake smiles are better than Jin’s now.
“Tsubasa,” he whines to his administrator one day at the water cooler, “Tsubasa would it be impossible for me to transfer to Pi’s team?”
Tsubasa smiles wryly and gets his water before responding. “Of course it’s impossible,” he tells Jin patiently, “KT-TUN just isn’t attractive to say at all and we don’t have any more readily available vowels in the agency just yet.”
Jin groans at the older man’s mirth and trudges back to his desk.
~~~~~
One afternoon, after getting into an argument with his teammates about the particulars of a case report-Koki insists that Jin had gone right when Jin is 100% he had gone left-the office begins to buzz with a nervous kind of fear.
“A storm’s coming,” Ueda reports, after reading one of the coded e-mails Tegoshi sometimes sends him when the kid is bored and trolling the agency intranet for files to hack as a “security test.”
Talk of a storm coming in the office means one thing and one thing only; ARASHI is on its way downstairs.
Officially known as the Agency Regulations Administrators for Special Hearing Inquiries, ARASHI are the head investigators for the Internal Affairs department and subsequently, the number one group any agent-whether he likes the individual ARASHI members or not-doesn’t want to see during working hours.
“Shit,” Koki curses, when he hears Ueda’s announcement. “I hope this isn’t about the printer I uh, borrowed last weekend.”
Kame throws him a withering look. “It better not be.” He looks at his watch. “Alright, we’re done wasting time. We’ll say that Jin went right since Koki’s vantage was better and leave it at that. The report’s due in an hour.”
Jin sputters. “Koki had a better vantage but I was the one who moved!”
“The report is due in an hour,” Kame repeats, and begins packing up his papers.
When Jin sticks his tongue out at him, the only one who notices is Nakamaru.
~~~~~
Yamapi is at his desk peacefully wrapping up the last of the files regarding the next trial date he has to testify on when his cell phone rings; he blinks, looks down at the display, and sees Tegoshi’s name.
He picks up.
“Hello? Tegoshi?”
“Ano,” Tegoshi begins, and the reception is a bit staticky because Yamapi knows the young agent is working with Massu somewhere in the mountains right now.
“What’s wrong?” Yamapi asks, and immediately knows that when he can’t hear Tegoshi’s smile in his voice it means that something isn’t right.
“I know leader said I shouldn’t stick my nose around in other people’s business when I’m bored but…”
Yamapi sighs. “Tegoshi,” he begins, patiently, “hacking the files of our targets is your job, but hacking the files of your coworkers is no good, isn’t it?”
Tegoshi fidgets; Yamapi can hear him shuffling the phone to his other side as he tucks locks of hair behind his ears. “Well yeah, but since Yamashita-kun specifically said not to poke around in other people’s business I thought it meant it was okay to poke into any business about NEWS, ne.”
Yamapi blinks. “Wait, so you…”
“Un. A few inter-agency E-mails. I read our names. And Akanishi’s name, for some reason.”
“What’s going on?”
Tegoshi swallows. “Leader, a storm is coming.”
Yamapi’s eyebrows jump when he hears the news. “Huh.”
~~~~~
Thankfully the storm turns out to be a category two instead of a category five; Agents Matsumoto and Sakurai are the only ones sent and when they arrive at Yamapi’s door Pi has already had a chance to calm down and properly prepare to meet them.
He’s been expecting them for a while now.
“Ah, so it was you two who were supposed to show up today, ne,” Pi greets, and offers them both coffee.
Sho whistles appreciatively at the admission. “That little kid of yours is good,” he says, sounding fonder of Tegoshi’s snooping habits than annoyed by them despite the nature of his job.
Yamapi chuckles back. “All of my men are good, ne.”
Matsumoto grabs one of Yamapi’s paperweights and starts fidgeting with it absently. “Good or not, two of your men are also currently incapacitated, aren’t they?” he points out, stepping all over sensitive wounds unapologetically. He doesn’t stop playing with Pi’s paperweight as he talks.
Yamapi visibly stiffens when he hears the jab, though his face betrays nothing. “That,” he tells Matsumoto calmly, “is not because they did anything wrong.”
And there is the crux of the matter, the cue Matsumoto has been waiting for.
Jun smiles secretively, putting the paperweight down and leaning forward until he is almost nose to nose with Yamashita. “Maybe it wasn’t your men, but we have some pretty solid information that says someone did do something wrong that day,” he whispers around his grin, like this is a fun conspiracy for just he and Pi.
Yamapi doesn’t react; he isn’t sure how to. “What are you saying?”
Sho is the one who clarifies, pushing aside all of Matsumoto’s showy ambiguity and getting straight to the matter. “Yamapi,” he says quietly, “would you like to find out who’s really responsible for Uchi-kun and Kusano-kun’s injuries?”
To Matsumoto’s delight, Yamapi finally reacts.
~~~~~
“A leak?” Yamapi murmurs, after they explain what they mean. He doesn’t want to believe it, doesn’t want to think that someone who is in this agency, who has gone through all the same trials and tribulations and suffering that the rest of them have, would betray one of his own just like that.
“A leak,” Matsumoto confirms. “We made the connection after poring over Kato, Kusano, Masuda, Koyama, and Tegoshi’s reports; in the week before the incident, all of them write about having spent time with the same person. Mostly offhanded remarks, but we’ve also got confirmation from other agents now.”
Yamapi purses his lips. “And you think what happened has to be this person’s fault?” He’s skeptical, and rightfully so. “He’s just a junior agent, ne. How would he have been able to make these sorts of connections in any crime syndicate?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Sho admits. “That’s why we’re here to see you.”
“Why do you need to see me? If you have the proof than all you have to do is arrest him and interrogate him, right?”
“We want whoever he’s working for too,” Sho tells him. “And for that, we have a mission that goes live next week.”
Yamapi isn’t sure he likes the sound of that. “A mission?”
Matsumoto nods. “Undercover. After his unit was disbanded last year this agent has been requesting to leave the agency on the clock every month. He wants to take part in the big federal exchange program with the American government that begins next week. We’ve since okayed him to go.”
Yamapi isn’t sure he follows the logic behind that. “Why would you let him leave the country if he’s a threat to our interests?”
“Because he’s been so desperate to get to America for the past six months that we think whoever he has ties to on the other side might be over there. This is definitely part of something bigger. We think the exchange with the FBI is just a cover for him to meet with whoever it is he’s really working for. This could become a matter of international security.”
“The Americans,” Yamapi realizes.
“Exactly. And as such, we’re arranging some company for him; this year Japan is sending two agents to study abroad with the FBI. One of which is a known loose cannon.”
A moment.
And then Yamapi sighs, rubs his temples. “Akanishi,” he breathes, finally getting the connection between NEWS and Jin Tegoshi had been talking about earlier.
Sho and Jun exchange knowing looks when the KAT-TUN member’s name comes up. “That kid of yours,” Jun marvels, “can’t get anything past him, huh?”
Yamapi smiles bitterly. “Not a thing.”
~~~~~
When Jin is called into Yamapi’s office ten minutes later, he can’t believe his ears.
“Why me?” he asks. “Why not Kato-kun?”
“Jin’s English is horrible,” Yamapi agrees.
Jin frowns at him. “Not part of my argument, thanks.”
“But it’s true. Shige’s English is ten times better than yours, ne.”
Matsumoto looks impatient with the two of them. “Look, we’re sending Akanishi because everyone and their mother knows that he fights with Kamenashi like they’re high school girls from different cliques. We need to make it look like his going to America is an attempt to sever all connections with the rest of KAT-TUN. Which, if you don’t mind me saying, isn’t a hard thing to believe. All we’d have to do after that is show you and Yamashita fighting about you leaving to America and that’s it; all your closest ties to this agency are gone.”
Jin glares.
Matsumoto ignores him. “If our target believes that Akanishi is on the outs of the agency too, then he might be more inclined to trust him. Even…get him in on the ground floor maybe. You know, if Akanishi doesn’t fuck up.” The older agent smirks at the thought.
Jin glowers back, and Yamapi almost forgot how horrible it is to be in the same room with these two at the same time.
Sho interrupts before it gets ugly though; even if Ohno-kun is the leader there’s a reason why out of everyone in ARASHI, people are always the most wary of Agent Sakurai.
“Look, it doesn’t make sense to send Kato-kun because no one would believe NEWS suddenly ousted him given Koyama’s penchant for shouting how much you all love each other from the rooftops. With Akanishi it’s clean and easy because we’ve already got the history built in from reality. KAT-TUN’s been fighting pretty consistently since they got to this side of Tokyo. No one would think twice if we said one of them is leaving suddenly.”
Jin moves to protest, but is cut off by a look from Sho. “Everyone knows,” he says. “Internal Affairs especially.”
Jin’s jaw snaps shut.
Yamapi has a headache. “Shouldn’t Kamenashi-kun be here to hear this as well, then?”
The two ARASHI members share a look. Matsumoto almost seems gleeful when he turns back to Yamapi and says, “Nope!”
~~~~~
When Jin discovers that the rest of his team isn’t going to know anything about why he is suddenly leaving them, he realizes that part of him doesn’t want to go. Somehow, it feels like a deception that will destroy the last tentative piece of tinder holding the bridge of their team bonds together.
When he returns to his office after the meeting is over and Kame has sent a memo indicating all of the paperwork Jin is late in submitting, Jin realizes that this isn’t the same team that needed him all those years ago. He thinks that maybe something that is falling apart already can be sacrificed for something that can still be saved.
Matsumoto had been the one to say it; “If you crack this case it might clear up all that bad air around NEWS’s last mission,” he’d murmured, dangling that carrot shamelessly in front of Jin and Pi just like that.
“You mean,” Yamapi started, sounding hopeful for a moment, completely unguarded, “my team could…”
“It might speed up the investigation on our end,” Sho had confirmed, “And we can reinstate NEWS that much faster.”
Jin goes home that night and starts to pack for America.
~~~~~
The day before he leaves he marches into the office and puts on his cheeriest cheer face, the one that he uses with all of his targets and that never fails to charm the pants off of them.
He gives his best performance to date that afternoon and can’t help but hope that one of them-any of them-will see right through it.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning!” he chirps.
A moment.
“You can’t sleep in the office,” Nakamaru begins, “Isn’t that against regulations?”
Jin sighs. “No. Tomorrow, I’m leaving for America.”
“I hope you at least gave Kame your vacation notice a month in advance like you’re supposed to before you bought the tickets,” Ueda sighs, and sounds like even though he’s hoping, he’s not expecting.
Jin stomps his foot. “It’s not a vacation!”
“Right, you’re going over there so you can work hard as an FBI, right?” Koki snorts.
Jin stops, stares. How did Koki know? Is there already a leak about that too?
“Have fun as a Female Body Inspector,” the sniper finishes, and kicks back in his chair. “You know, on your vacation.”
Jin sighs. “It’s not a vacation.”
“Sure,” they say, and share knowing looks.
Jin gives up and trudges down the hall to go tell Kame.
~~~~~
The rest of the group starts to realize that maybe it isn’t a vacation when they hear Kame’s raised voice coming from his office.
What’s abnormal about it is that Kame’s raised voice is not accompanied by Jin’s.
Something about that seems weird.
~~~~~
The rest of KAT-TUN finally realizes for a fact that it isn’t a vacation when, after lunch, Yamapi and Jin start shouting at each other in the hallways.
“How can you just leave like this?” Yamapi complains, “And you don’t tell me until the day before?”
“I just decided! Can’t you be happy for me?” Jin shrieks. “You’re just like Kame!”
Yamapi is stunned into silence. Then, “Fine. Have fun in America. Stay there for all I care,” he murmurs, before storming into his office and slamming the door behind him.
“Oh shit,” Nakamaru says to himself, when he gets it. “He really isn’t going on vacation.”
~~~~~
The next day Jin boards the plane with his kouhai and his kouhai alone; there is no one else there to see him off, no smiling, waving people or cheerful bon voyage signs. Just strangers milling around a crowded airport hoping they get through security without being searched.
It’s painful but expected; Jin tells himself that it’s all part of the job and that Ryo-chan and Pi would both be here if they could be, would smile and wish him luck and tell him to work hard and catch the bad guys.
“No one came, huh?” the younger agent beside him asks when he notices Jin’s gaze drifting over his shoulder every once in a while.
Jin shrugs. “I don’t need them and they don’t need me.”
His companion smiles. “I know what you mean.”
Jin boards the plane without another backwards glance and knows that as painful as this all is, this part is really the easy part.
The hard part won’t be until after he comes back.
~~~~~
When his plane takes off he doesn’t know that Nakamaru’s car is parked in the airport parking lot, just shy of the runway.
“That’s his plane,” the explosives expert says, and squints up into the sky as Jin’s aircraft rises up and heads east. “He’s going to Los Angeles.”
Koki tries to look bored. “Yeah, well. Good riddance. I call his desk; I’ve wanted a window cubicle for forever now.”
“It’s great to hear your point of view on that matter,” Junno chortles, and earns himself a smack on the head.
After the plane is out of sight Nakamaru gets back into the driver’s seat and starts the engine again. “For some reason,” he says, “I feel like eating hamburgers.”
“I hope he has fun in America,” Junno chirps randomly as they pull out of the parking lot. “I bet the hamburgers there are really good.”
“I don’t,” Koki sulks. “And there’s nothing wrong with the hamburgers here, moron! They’re delicious!”
Ueda drowns all of them out by turning up the volume on his iPod.
~~~~~
On the other side of the runway, Yamapi and Ryo silently watch the sky even when they can’t see Jin’s plane in it anymore.
“You aren’t really mad,” Ryo observes, with a sideways look at his team leader.
“No,” Yamapi admits, because Ryo notices everything.
“And he doesn’t really want to go,” Ryo adds, derisively. “What a piss poor undercover agent; it’s written all over his face.”
Yamapi smiles a little. “Yeah.”
They stand like that in silence for a little while longer, up until the sun starts to dip down into the horizon behind them.
Ryo shoves his hands into his pockets as the late-autumn wind blows through the silent airfield, brow furrowed in thought. “I hope he knows that when he comes back, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
Yamapi knows.
But he also knows something else too, from his own experience.
“I think,” he says, wisely, “that you have to not be able to have something for a while to be able to fully appreciate it once you get it back.”
Ryo blinks. “Are you drunk?”
Yamapi chuckles. “I just know that when we finally get to come back, NEWS will be stronger than it used to be. Maybe it will be the same for KAT-TUN too.”
Silence.
Then, an embarrassed snort. “Don’t compare us to those morons, we’re nothing alike,” Ryo complains. “And let’s get out of here, it’s freezing.”
Yamapi laughs and obediently climbs back into the car.
He eyes the empty eastern sky in the rearview mirror as they leave the airport and believes that Jin will come back soon; he knows that he’ll be stronger when he does.
In the meantime, he hopes that KAT-TUN will wait for him.
END
EDITS PLZ.