[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 78 ~Akira Gone~
Title: The Things We Can't Control
Author:
prettyorianna
Pairing: Akame. Others to be added later.
Rating: NC-17.
Genre: crime drama au
Beta by: my cat Gemma. and maeda_marika
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Two criminals with vastly different styles meet by chance one day. They immediately clash but is that all they'll ever be? How much is fate and how much choice? And how will their meeting change the world around them?
Author's Note: More info on Akira's death. Also, I have a nifty new banner but I don't have enough time to get it to a size I like tonight so I'm going to put it next chapter and switch back and forth between the two banners every few chapters. They're both so nice, I can't decide between them!
BANNER BY DESHISORABA!! THE MOST AWESOME BANNER EVER AND I WILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO DISAGREES!
Warning: This gets graphic often occasionally, containing at the very least foul language, character death, nefarious crimes, rape, etc etc.
The Master Posts:
On my journal - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_ Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the je_kamenashi Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the kattun_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the jin_fics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
Chapter 78 ~Akira Gone~
“What?!”
Kame couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. His… his ears… he must have heard all wrong. There was no way Aoi had just said what Kame thought he heard. It just… it wasn’t possible.
“He died last night at the hospital,” and Aoi’s voice shook as he said it.
“The hospital?” Kame was surprised. He had thought Akira was being kept at the prison in the infirmary still. “Since when did they have him at the hospital?”
“He got a bad fever and, well, there was this outbreak a while back and two people nearly died so they figured, just to be sure, it was best to get him out of the prison until he was not sick anymore.” Aoi gave a bitter laugh. “They didn’t care about him one bit. They just didn’t want to risk getting infected by him. Did you know, they didn’t even take him to the hospital after he was nearly beat to death? He’s been here in a coma and they never even took him in for tests!”
That he hadn’t known either or he’d have made a fuss over it.
But…
Dead?
“So… what did they decide he had? Or did they even bother to try to find out?”
Aoi sighed. He looked so tired. “I don’t know. I just know the man in charge of the prison, Johnny Kitagawa, had them bring me to his office and then he told me the hospital sent over paperwork saying that ‘the prisoner’ had died. He wouldn’t tell me more than that. And by the time I got back to the cell, it seemed like everyone else knew it, too…” but that was all it took. Aoi was nearly sobbing as he said, “I’ve missed him so much and now he’s never coming back! And how could you try to hide what happened to Yurina from me?”
“I was going to…” but Kame just couldn’t finish the sentence. It was a lie. Well, maybe it wouldn’t always have been a lie. He was pretty sure his guilt would have led him to eventually tell Aoi. But as it stood, denying he was hiding it was just a flat-out lie. “No. Not yet, anyway. But I’ve been trying to convince her to tell you on her own. That’s why she refused to come today. She said she was never able to lie to you, that you’d see right through it. She keeps saying she’s not a ‘good girl’ anymore and that she doesn’t want you to know it, like she’s somehow tainted. I tell her she’s not but I don’t think it’s really sinking in.” Kame’s mind flashed back on everything he’d done over the past couple of weeks. “They won’t do it again. ‘Someone’ took care of them. Abe and all eight of his friends… Um… so I read. In the, ah, newspaper. How… do you know about it, anyway?”
“New prisoner came in bragging about seeing the tape. I recognized Abe Mitsuru’s name from Yurina’s arrest and the description of the girl in the video sounded like her. I couldn’t really ask anyone for more information about it because nobody will talk to me so I don’t have a lot of details.”
Someone there had seen the tape? “Oh, god, you cannot tell her about that tape! I destroyed the master copy which she knew about but she has no idea he sold it. Please, you can’t tell her that. She’s… she’s rebuilding. She’s doing better than I could have hoped, though it’s a slow process. Please, please don’t tell her that Taro sold it. I am so sorry I let this happen. She was sneaking out, blackmailed into running money and drugs and she wouldn’t talk to me or tell me what was going on, so I followed her. But even though she didn’t know I was right behind her, she kept losing me. But I got closer and closer to finding her destination each time and when I did, I heard Abe and Naito in the warehouse and I tried so hard to break down that door but by the time I got inside, she’d been drugged, loaded into Abe’s car, and they were pulling away and I couldn’t stop them. It took a few days to track her down and I know I failed her and I failed you but I swear I did everything I could. Oh, Aoi, I don’t understand how you don’t hate me. Everything is my fault. You wouldn’t be in here if I hadn’t shown up on your doorstep, or if I’d let Komatsu have me that first time at the club. Akira would still be alive and you both could have protected Yurina from this…” and Kame was crying too, now. “I am so sorry! Please forgive me!”
“Oh, Kame…” Aoi sniffled, wiping the tears from his cheek with the back of his hand, “You take too much on yourself that isn’t your fault. That guilt will eat away at you. Please, you and Yurina, you’re all I have left. I need you to take care of yourself and her, too, though I know she’s so stubborn and doesn’t want to admit she needs help most of the time. I just can’t lose anything else. I need you both!”
“How am I supposed to tell her that her brother is dead on top of everything she’s been through?” Kame sighed, sniffling similarly and having just as poor of luck ridding his cheeks of the tears as Aoi was having. “I don’t know how to tell her that…”
“I’d rather tell her myself but it wouldn’t be right to hide it for however long it takes to convince her to come here herself. I know you’ll find a way. Please, Kame-chan.”
And then their time was up. Aoi was led back into some other part of the prison and Kame was left to go home. Everything felt so unreal. He knew he hadn’t dreamt it. Akira was dead. It just… one minute he was sure it must be a mistake and then he was angry and then crying again, cycling through the shock, anger, and sorrow over and over the whole way home.
He still had no idea how to tell Yurina but it couldn’t wait.
So when Yurina finally came home that afternoon and asked him why he looked like he’d been crying and about how things stood with her brothers, all Kame could say was, “Though I didn’t tell him, Aoi knows what happened to you, and Akira’s dead.”
“What?” and the small smile she had when she first walked into the apartment dropped like it had never existed in the first place. “No… no, that can’t be true. You… why would you lie about something like that? It’s cruel!”
“Do you really think I would lie to you? About anything?”
“No, but…” Kame could see the desperate hope in her eyes as she tried to cling to something which would make his words not be true. “He can’t be dead! He… he just can’t!”
“I’m sorry but…”
“No. No! I can’t hear this now!” and she shrugged off the comforting hand that Kame tried to put on her should, shoving him away so hard he fell back on his ass. She was gone before he could scramble back to his feet.
Nevertheless, he was after her in a second. He caught up to her halfway down the stairs to the ground floor. Yurina was leaning, forehead against the wall with her eyes closed, weeping. Her knuckles on her right hand were bloody and the wall had not one but rather three fist-sized holes in it.
“Yurina…” Kame spoke softly, not wanting to startle her. “Come back up to the apartment and let me take care of that hand, ne? We’ll… we’ll find some way through this. You and me and Aoi. Please.”
This time she didn’t shrug off the hand he put on her shoulder. Instead she mutely followed him back up the stairs. Kame got a bowl of water and a wash rag, gently cleaning the torn flesh of her knuckles before wrapping a bandage around it all.
The look in her eyes was lost… They were exactly like Aoi’s eyes. Exactly. She had the same eyes as Akira and Aoi. How had he not noticed that before?
Yurina didn’t eat dinner that night. She had stretched out on the couch once her hand was doctored and had eventually fallen asleep, so Kame had carried her to her bed carefully and packed up the leftovers for her to have for breakfast.
The entire Kumai family, Akira and Aoi and Yurina, they didn’t deserve all this pain. Not that he did either but his life had taught him that it was inevitable for him. He lived with that. He didn’t like it, but that was just how it was. But them… he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d dragged them all down to his level and they were the ones paying for it.
On the one hand, he thought he should leave. Just put a note in the kitchen wishing them all well. They’d be better off because he couldn’t bring anything worse down on them.
On the other hand, he couldn’t just abandon them. They were the only real family he’d ever known and it would be cruel to leave them to deal with their pain all alone. And maybe that was selfish to want to stay with them or maybe it was noble. He couldn’t decide.
All he knew was, sometimes it seemed like there were no right decisions in life.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 79 ~Two Calls~ *new - Feb 12*
A/N: Well, there you go. Not a whole lot of new info on Akira's death, but I swear you'll get even more info either in 80 or 82 (depends).
Yurina gets so angry. I guess it's a defense mechanism, to help her deal with her pain. But she needs to stop breaking things and hitting walls. Just saying.
At least next chapter is back to present!Akame. Expect Massu's call and possibly some fluffy Akame goodness.