[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 82 ~Ever Onward~
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: Ah, finally, yes? I'm sorry it took so long. And I wanted to make it longer to reward you for your patience and for not murdering me in my sleep via fireman's axes, but then I wouldn't be able to post it tonight, so you get 1400 words or so. And I was going to go back to the other banner for a few chapters but it's late and I'm exhausted, so this one again and I'll switch 'em out next chapter.
NEW BANNER BY going_dangerous!!
Okay, now I have two banners and they're both amazing (oh, and you should see the wallpaper version of this banner.... so nice!), so I will be rotating them out every few chapters. Thanks to both going_dangerous and deshisoraba for my wonderful two banners.
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 82 ~Ever Onward~
The doctor confirmed Yurina’s home pregnancy test and said that, despite the drugs she was on at the time of conception, everything seemed normal so far. The doctor, though she didn’t exactly say anything, was a lot colder to both of them once she asked about that. And since Yurina clearly didn’t want to relive her experience just to change her attitude, Kame kept his mouth shut as well.
But even judgmental physicians weren’t enough to dim the happiness of knowing Akira was alive and that both of the twins’ lives had improved so very much despite the fact that they were still in prison.
Aoi had asked them to get the phone line turned on at the apartment, but Kame was a bit (read: a lot) concerned that if he did it in his own name, his father would track him down. He wanted to ask Yurina to get phone service in her name instead, but he wasn’t sure how to ask. She was just too clever at times; she’d want to know why he didn’t want it in his name. And maybe he should tell her…
But he couldn’t. Fear stole his voice from him any time his mind went near the idea of telling her about being Papa K’s son. After a couple of days, he stopped trying. He just… he couldn’t make himself say the words. And he knew that, though his fear of his father was fairly rational considering everything, his fear of sharing that information with Yurina was surely irrational. She was completely trustworthy, he was sure of it. He wouldn’t have done the things he did, killing those people, if he couldn’t trust her.
Still…
He just couldn’t get the words out.
Yurina’s eighteenth birthday passed almost unnoticed, simply because as the end of May drew closer, Yurina’s mood rapidly deteriorated and she would go for hours and hours in silence. She didn’t even bother telling him it was her birthday on the 30th until halfway through the very day. And even then, it was more an accidental telling than anything else. She wasn’t deliberately hiding it from him so much (at least, that’s the impression he had), but rather she was just so distracted that she didn’t really care. Finding out so last minute, Kame didn’t have the chance to get her a present so instead he just let her have his last purin from the fridge. Not much, but it was the thought that counted, right? Besides, she seemed to have developed a sudden sweet tooth so he knew she liked it.
And then it was June.
Kame finally decided to use the false identity the twins set up for him, Odagiri Ryu, to have phone service activated for the apartment. He also made up his mind to focus on finding a job.
Yurina decided not to have an abortion. She said she couldn’t bear the guilt if she killed her baby, except she didn’t exactly call it “her baby” so much as she just said “it” every time. She was still hurting. Kame could see that much clearly. Being pregnant had forced her to confront what happened to her sooner than otherwise, but she did seem to be dealing with everything rather well. She wasn’t exactly happy but she wasn’t completely miserable or suicidal at least.
Finding a job was proving difficult. Nobody wanted to hire some teenager (apparently you’re still a kid in the eyes of many adults even when you’re eighteen) with no prior work history. And he couldn’t use Ito-san as part of his prior work history because, well, Ito-san knew him as Kamenashi Kazuya, not Odagiri Ryu. The twins were in jail so he couldn’t use them, either, even though his paychecks had all been in the false name.
He had to find something. He wasn’t just taking care of himself. He was taking care of Yurina and, in a little over seven months, a baby as well.
Yurina insisted on taking over the cooking while Kame was job searching. She still went to the firing range several times a week and a few of her self-defense classes, too, though she refrained from any type of sparring. She was only two months pregnant, she said, but she didn’t want to take chances.
About a week into June, Kame finally managed to get a part-time job stocking shelves in a department store using his Odagiri alias, after which he had the phone line connected at the apartment. The first call went to the prison, to let the twins know. It seemed like things had changed rapidly there since Shibata Takeshi put his protection on them; they were already arranging things to serve as mediators between the members of different gangs as well as way to extend their pre-arrest information network into the prison system more proactively. It seemed that, now that word had spread of their innocence, people were actually listening to them again.
It was kind of strange. All of these hard-core convicts, people you wouldn’t expect to be sentimental, that seem to be completely incapable of trusting others and that you would never dare trust yourself… it was like they all put Aoi and Akira on some sort of pedestal for choosing to sacrifice so much to help one boy. Apparently the logic was something along the lines that most of the good people they know aren’t criminals (so they can’t relate) and most of the criminals aren’t good people (so they can’t be trusted), but the twins managed to be startlingly good people AND were criminals and thus capable of understanding.
As for Yurina, little by little, Kame could see her changing. One day, she stopped saying “it” and started calling it “the baby” or “my baby” instead. And, though the morning sickness was making her really crabby at times, as June continued she seemed more and more at peace with her pregnancy. She started humming but didn’t seem to even realize she was doing it because when Kame pointed it out to her, she gave him a funny look and told him he was imagining things because she absolutely doesn’t hum because it’s too girly.
That was the day he learned never to accuse Yurina of being girly ever again, even in jest. He decided the cost to his dignity and also his crotch was just too high (she kneed him pretty darn hard and stormed out of the room in a total huff while he lay clutching himself in pain).
But he knew he wasn’t imagining the humming. He just wasn’t stupid enough to mention it again.
Then one day he came home from work and found she’d hung her most recent sonogram on the refrigerator door. She didn’t say anything about it and neither did he but every now and again he could see her stare across the room at it for a few minutes, usually with a small smile.
And then there was the day he came home in early July and she was practically bawling. Things had been going so well, so he was naturally worried. It took ten minutes to calm her down enough to make sense of what she was saying. Still crying, she finally said, “What if I can’t love my baby?”
“What?” Kame asked, unable to keep his surprise from showing. But, really, the question shocked him because he knew her heart was good and kind and she’d seemed so much happier recently so he thought she’d come to terms with everything.
“What if… when I look at my baby, all I can see are those men? I mean, if the baby looks like… whichever one…” she cried, grabbing his hand. “What if I can’t… can’t… It’s not right. Babies are supposed to be loved. My baby should be loved!”
“Oh, Yurina…” and Kame smiled kindly at her, “I think, if you could hear yourself right now, you’d know you already love your baby. I think that it doesn’t matter what he-”
Yurina interrupted with, “She.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t know that.” The doctor said it would be at least August before he would be able to determine what sex the baby was.
“But I do. I know it’s a girl. I just… I know.”
“Well, either way, you already love him. Her. Whatever. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be worried in the first place, right?”
“I guess you have a point,” she finally conceded, though she still looked so uncertain.
But he wasn’t worried. Maybe at first the whole pregnancy was just so much more bad news on top of everything else that she’d already been through. But now, she was happy about it, much happier than he’d ever seen her aside from the day they found out Akira was still alive.
That baby was damn lucky he - oh, sorry, she - was going to have Yurina for a mother.
Kame was sure of it.
+++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 83 ~The Fire and The Blood~
A/N: Well, there you go. A few important bits of info, particularly important is the stuff about the twins, how things are changing for them. Well, okay, yeah, Yurina's pregnancy stuff is important too but, well, it's a pregnancy LOL. Not exactly a rare thing for humans so to some degree we all know what course that will follow.
Anyway, I'm going to bed now. Oh, and part of chapter 73 is already written so hopefully it won't take too long to finish it and put it up.