Ran shut the door of the Koneko II's cab and turned to face the small shop across the street. He didn't move. Some part of himself, he was sure, wasn't ready for this.

Sakura was gone, studying in Paris now. Omi had been gentle when breaking that news to him, months ago. A part of him had grieved, but a larger, sterner, part had nodded in acceptance. At least Sakura was going on with her life, not waiting around for an assassin like him. How could someone with blood on his hands ever touch the unsoiled?

But now... but now....

"Scared?" Youji softly asked from behind him.

Ran shook his head. But the truth was that he was scared, at least a little. To go back into that old life....

"Weren't you the one who told Omi that if he could get out, he should?" Youji asked. "It's the same thing."

"It's not," Ran denied.

"It is." Youji's tone was firm, booking no arguments. Ran turned to look at him.

Youji leaned back against the trailer and tapped a cigarette out of its pack. "If you go back into there, you leave Weiss behind you," the older man explained, raising a hand up to light his vice of choice. Green eyes met Ran's. "You're no longer 'Aya' at all. She is. You're just Ran, and you're free."

"I'm guilty."

Youji exhaled smoke and looked at the sky. "I'm a sinner. I know sin when I see it. You, my friend, are innocent." His eyes met Ran's again. "Go home."

 

The door bell chimed and Aya turned to greet the customer. "Welco--" she started to sing, the note dying away in her throat as she saw who it was.

Gold sunshine streamed in before him, glancing off the red hair, the pale skin, illumating him and pooling on the floor around him. Almost like a vision, or a mirage. For an instant she wondered if she was dreaming again.

"Oniichan?"

He looked away uneasily, at the flower cases that lined the shop. His shop, of which she had only been the caretaker.

She took a step forward, setting down the vase she had been holding on the worktable.

"I...." His voice trailed off. He was blushing. His eyes raised once to her, then fell back to the floor. One foot angled up slightly. He was going to leave!

Aya flung herself across the distance between then before he could take that action, wrapping her arms tightly around him, crushing herself to him. The suede of his shirt was soft against her cheek. His body was rigid with tension. She heard people moving past them into the shop, but didn't open her eyes. She didn't care.

"Ran," she heard an unfamiliar voice say, laden with care and old acquaintance. She imagined a glare, a glance. And then...her brother lost his tension. He accepted, arms curving around her.

"Aya," he said into her hair, and she knew he was going to stay.

 

It was like coming home to a place you had been sure you were never going to see again. The Koneko, the original Koneko no Sumu Ie, despite the seasons and souls of weathering on those who returned, retained the same pristinity it had had when they left it.

It was like stepping back into a dream, Youji mused. A dream where the ground was none too stable and the carpet seemed like it might be pulled out from under your feet at any moment, but in the end, a dream of home.

Aya-chan was there, of course. She and her brother didn't have any words for one another, not after so long a time and so great a distance, but as Youji watched the man he'd come to admire as a partner and know as one of his best friends hold his sister gently as she crushed herself ever closer to him, he was glad that at least two of their fucked-up little aggregate had found family and closure. Omi wasn't here for the big homecoming, but he'd promised to bullet train back over to Tokyo in two days' time.

Ken, on the other hand, nodded just a little bit at the siblings' reunion then carried his bag upstairs. Youji followed, giving the Fujimiyas privacy to conduct their own tears and inevitable argument. He could wait to be formally introduced to a conscious Aya-chan later.

He found Ken waiting for him on the landing.

"She's not here," Ken said.

Youji's mouth tightened involuntarily. "I know."

"Her shop is gone."

"I saw." He thought he'd seen a lot of painful expressions on Ken's face before, but this one was just plain bleak.

"She didn't come for us."

Youji had no words as Ken trudged up the stairs.

 

Lady Killer 10 -- Kitaku (Homecoming) 1
by K.Huntsman
released 18 July 2002

 

Ken slept most of the next two days, which was probably for the best. The one appearance he put in at the shop, Ran had yelled at him for scaring away the customers. It hadn't been a harsh yelling, the man was still sparkling with happiness over being reunited with his sister--well, as much as Fujimiya Ran could ever be described as being happy or sparkling over anything--but still, Youji had yelled back on Ken's behalf and then disappeared for the rest of the day, making sure Ken ate. That evening, he and Ran and Aya, being the marginally sane members of the household, had congregated in the Underworld to try to figure out what to do next.

It was Yuki-chan, of course, that was the topic of their discussion. As much as getting back to Tokyo, Youji knew, they'd all hoped to varying degrees to be reunited with their erstwhile partner. But Aya-chan couldn't shed much light on the subject for them. During their months away, she'd been busy running the Koneko, with frequent visits from her neighbor, who'd told her innocent stories of what the four of them had been like. But one morning she'd gotten up and discovered that Akayuki had moved out, seemingly overnight, and that Magic House was gone, lock, stock, and barrel. Like magic.

"Shit," Youji cursed. "Kritiker, bet you anything." Aya-chan was under the impression that Kritiker was a secret government organization they'd all worked for. It was understood that Ran would kill whoever disillusioned her on that point.

"The problem is," Ran stated calmly from where he sat on the sofa, "that Kritiker's databases are inaccessible if not destroyed altogether."

"Even for Omi, you think?"

Wisteria eyes flickered up at him. "No."

 

"She's gone?" Omi questioned as they went down the stairs.

"Vanished like yesterday's sunset," Youji replied, keeping a wary eye on Ken, who preceded them.

"That's so not like her. I mean, after Kritiker collapsed, I'd've thought the first place she would've come would be back here. She knew we didn't want to leave her, right?"

"There is the other possibility." And they had to acknowledge that. So far as they knew, they were the only ones to survive Kritiker's collapse and assassination.

"Elimination."

"We don't know that." Ken was still stubbornly holding onto a thread of hope.

"Ken-kun...."

Ken spun around. "I have to believe, Omi. Give me that."

Omi looked at Ken, and nodded. Eggshells, Youji thought. They were at pains to walk on eggshells around Ken these days. He hoped Akayuki was alive. She'd better be so. He didn't want to have to watch Ken lose that too. He didn't think Ken had it in himself to kill himself, but going rogue or going to waste, both things Youji was too familiar with, were definitely there. It wasn't fair.

"Youji-kun?" Omi asked, interrupting his thoughts.

Youji shook his head. "Don't talk to me, chibi, talk to the computer."

"Fine, fine." Omi waved an impatient hand at Youji. "Go help Ran-kun and Aya-chan in the shop. Ken-kun and I'll be fine down here."

Youji nodded as Omi sat down behind the main terminal, right hand already reaching for the mouse.

Ken left without a word later that evening

 

The geisha sighed as she stepped into the rickshaw and sat lightly. It was late and the party had been long. She wanted very little more than to go home and sleep. "The Yamabuki, please," she said to the puller.

She went absolutely still at the moment when she first noticed the puller.

"Ken-san?" she whispered against his silent, yearning look.

She leaned forward, pale hand touching his cheek. His eyes closed and his hands came automatically to hold hers to his flesh.

"No ghost," she judged quietly, almost to herself. "No..."

 

The rickshaw was abandoned behind the building as the two took a taxi, both silent, neither willing to separate hands, as if fearing to be separated by something more. Again.

 

"Okaasan," said Akayuki quietly into her cel phone, "I've met an old friend. I'll be staying with them tonight. I'll be back in the morning. We'll see. Yes, I'm fine. Yes, I know. I know. I will see you in the morning. Yes. I promise. Yes. Good night."

 

"Kritiker told me you were all dead," she said quietly, looking around at the four familiar faces. "They showed me proof. I didn't want to believe. But they made me. They reassigned me that night. I disappeared so quickly because I didn't--I couldn't--tell Aya-san that her brother was dead. Nor Sakura-san. It was... too much. I got lost in the flower and willow world instead. It was easier. I was kept busy. Shirayuki was kept busy."

"What were you doing?" It was just like their old meetings, Omi sitting on a turned-around computer chair, Ran-kun leaning against the wall, Youji-kun on the stuffed chair, Ken-kun and Yuki-chan on the sofa. Only now Ken-kun wasn't talking, was off in some altered state of consciousness somewhere, and Yuki-chan was dressed like a geisha. Was a geisha.

"Didn't we leave geisha behind in Kyoto?" Youji mused out loud.

Yuki shot him a glare. "Not all geisha live and work in the old capital, Youji-san. A fair number of us are Tokyoites."

"'Us'?" Ran prompted.

She nodded and returned to her narrative. "Half of the government policy in this country is made up and talked over in teahouses, everyone knows that. So, what better agent than a geisha? I already had the skills." Her smile sharpened. "You should see my dance sometime. I've only done Western dance with any of you."

Silence fell for a little bit.

"So what now?" she asked. "You need to tell me about where you've been at some point. Though given what I see, I'm not so sure I want to hear." Omi watched as her thumb slid gently along the side of Ken-kun's hand, coaxing. His hand gave hers a slight squeeze in response. Omi bit back a sigh. Damaged. They were all so damaged. And now with the weight of three a.m. on his shoulders, rebuilding Kritiker into something whole and true seemed like an impossible task. Not when the only people he could depend on were in this room and he'd seen nearly all of them at their cracking point. As it was, he imagined that he could hear Youji-kun and Ken-kun's sanity ticking away. But maybe that was only the wall clock.

"I'm rebuilding Kritiker," Omi said. "Not into what it was, retribution and punishment, and not what it became, violence and madness, but an agency to protect the weak and support the righteous. I can use good people." He met Akayuki's blue eyes, unmasked and unhindered by the black contacts she'd always worn before as a geisha. "I could use your help, Yuki-chan. Ken-kun and Youji-kun and Ran-kun are already considering it."

Yuki's eyes closed and her head tilted forward. She sighed, her shoulders drooping in something that looked like defeat. "Omi-san," she said. "Mamoru-san. It's not that I don't trust your vision--or your ability to make it come true--but I'm not sure that I can be a part of it. Not now."

"Why?" Omi asked softly.

She looked up, looked into him. "Because I'm so very tired of being a pawn, Mamoru-san. Being a geisha, just a geisha, may be demanding, but in the end I'm part of no one's schemes, no one's political ambitions. You said just now that you could use me. Yes, you could, that's very true. I could very likely be useful to you even where I am right now, but... I don't want to be used any more. I've paid for my pain. I need a respite from that life, or I'll break. I cannot be Magician. Not again. Maybe sometime, someday, but... not now."

"You need to be free."

She nodded.

Omi smiled. "I think I understand." He stood, swinging a leg over the chair, and, walking over to her, knelt down before her. "But Yuki-chan, even if you can't be a part of Kritiker now, or even ever again, could you do a favor for me?"

"What?"

His hands were on her knees, lightly. The silk of her outer kimono was rough and smooth beneath his palms. "Ran-kun said once that I was not a Takatori, that I was Tsukiyono Omi. Even though I am a Takatori, Takatori Mamoru... for most of my life I've been Omi. I don't like being called Mamoru, not by you. Not when you mean it to keep me distant from you."

She shook her head softly, gleaming hair stiff under the light. "I'm sorry, I can't--"

"I'm not rebuilding Kritiker to hurt you," he overrode. "Not you, not any member of Weiss. We've all paid our dues. Even I have. And if all of us just gave it up right now, I don't think anyone would be able to blame us. But the fact remains that I am a Takatori. Aside from my grandfather, the last Takatori. And I have the feeling that that's going to mean a lot of things in the future I may not like." He smiled wryly, thinking of just what being a Takatori was going to entail. "But Yuki-chan... being a Takatori means that I can help a lot of people. I've been in Kritiker and Weiss since I was a child. It's what I know. And I can make it better, use it to help people. And yes, I could 'use' you, I could certainly use all of you to help me in rebuilding it from the ground up. But I'm not going to force any of you, or anyone, to do anything. Because we may've been teammates, but more than that, I hope, we were friends." He looked at her. "Geisha or no geisha, Kyoto or no Kyoto, I hope what we have, what we all have, can still mean something."

Her line of sight fell to her lap. Omi could see that her eyes were clouded, troubled. She was thinking, and he hoped he'd said the right words.

"Remember the first Christmas?" Omi turned his head in surprise, blinking. Ken-kun hadn't said a word since returning with the Magician. "The takeout... that was Omi's idea."

Akayuki tilted her head slightly towards Ken, still not looking up. "I didn't eat last Christmas," she murmured.

"You'd better take care of your body," Ken said, "or you'll get sick."

She smiled just a little. "Don't worry about my body," Yuki said, sounding like she was quoting an old argument. "Worry about the rest of me."

Ken's thumb slid along the side of her hand. "May I?" he asked.

Her glance raised to his, then lowered again.

"Yes," she said softly.

 

Not every man got to spend the night with a geisha, but since Ken's room was furnished while Yuki's room wasn't, the two of them spent the night together. Ran wasn't quite sure how he felt about that, but, then, it was none of his business what they did. Still, some prurient side of himself couldn't help speculating....

"Interesting pair they make," Youji said, coffee mug in his hands. He took a sip. "The lost killer and the geisha. Sounds like a samurai romance."

"Hmm." Ran felt his lips curve just a little bit. He sipped at his own coffee, at the featureless white mug which had newly replaced the white Tokyo University mug. It was like him--a blank slate, with potential for new beginnings.

"Think they'll be okay?"

He shrugged a little. "Who knows?"

Youji sighed and, putting down his mug, leaned back a little. "Maybe there's no happiness for any of us, but if there is... I think they deserve it. Omi too." His green eyes met Ran's. "You, too."

"You don't deserve happiness?"

The other man sighed. "Not that I don't deserve it, but... I think I'm not going to get it. Kind of hard to get over the one woman of a lifetime, you know?"

"I don't." Ran played with the mug, its heat. For all that he'd lived, he really hadn't, not in that way. There had been Sakura--but even she hadn't been a real love. Even Omi had had greater, deeper loves than he had. "Maybe some people aren't capable of love."

Youji snorted. "Like hell. You'll meet someone someday who'll knock you right on your ass--and I'll be there to see it."

Ran smiled, amused. Then it sobered. "Maybe," he allowed. "But... to love someone like us... what kind of woman would do that? It's not like anyone outside would ever really understand. Not what we've been through. How could...." He let it trail off, unsure of what he was trying to say.

"How could anyone connect," Youji continued for him, understanding him better in some ways than Ran understood himself, "with killers like us?"

"Aah."

Youji let his chair drop forward onto all four legs. "Don't know," he said finally, picking up the mug again. "I don't know."

There was silence for a time, until Youji's voice broke it. "Still," he said, "I'm not always sure I'd've preferred being something like a salaryman. Death by paperwork."

"Papercuts," Ran corrected.

 

Yuki didn't sleep, instead listening to Ken breathing. She ran light fingers through his dark hair, so soft and silky compared to the lacquered shell that formed her own hair as a geisha. And across his skin, sun-warmed and sun-rough. Across scars she hadn't seen before. She wondered at them, at what had caused them. Some were still red and angry, raw. She didn't like the thought of the pain and fights he'd been in without her to protect his back. Not that she didn't trust the others, but... she should have been there. Even though she knew she didn't want to be there. Just looking at him, she knew it had been bad. Deep in his eyes, there were wounds of another sort. He'd been crushed, cut, mauled. Embattled and embittered. Traumatized.

Changed.

There was darkness in him now that hadn't been there before.

She wondered if there had been others. Other women. And she thought that there probably had been. He was a healthy young man and it had been nearly two years. She couldn't expect celibacy from him, especially when they'd never been intimate. The friendship had always come before sex. She'd been scared, then, a little, of losing that, of losing his respect. Now it seemed that she didn't have to worry about it anymore.

How could he want a geisha? Half of Japan thought of her profession as little more than pricey whores, and though that wasn't true, and she certainly wasn't one, how could bright Ken want someone who carried a parasol against the sun and hid herself in teahouses with men, drinking and entertaining them until late at night?

But, oh, she still wanted him. Wanted to strip away those layers of damage, soak him in sunshine and laughter again until he was whole and happy. Wanted to undo all the scars that would never leave.

Wanted only the best for him....

Quietly, she slipped from the bed.

 

Ran came up to the roof at sunrise, katana in hand, to begin the practice of his forms. He paused, slightly surprised, and stood for a moment watching Akayuki as she ran through her own. She still moved like a gymnast, light and fast, more agile than Ran knew he'd ever be. He wanted to smile at the incongruity she presented--dressed only in one of Ken's overlarge shirts, sleeves rolled up, practicing martial arts on a rooftop at dawn with a geisha's formal hairstyle.

She reached the end of her form and turned to him. "Ran-san," she said softly.

"Yuki-san," he replied, stepping forward. He saw her note the katana sheath in his hand and accept it.

"Spar with me?" she asked. She picked up a staff that lay on the ground. It wasn't the one she had always used, but glancing at the storage shed beyond her, Ran knew where she'd found it.

"Aah," he said, nodding, and took position facing her.

They'd never fought against one another while they were still assassins. Not even in the early days when "Magician" was still an enigma and enemy to Weiss. She'd just run from them, leaving their attempts at injury far behind fleet feet. So while he knew her style and she knew his, how they would interact was still undiscovered territory.

At first he held back, well-aware that she was dressed only in a thin shirt and that the steel in his hands was live, all too apt to cut or kill her. But she prodded him past that, teased a battle out of him. And despite her bare feet the rooftop gravel didn't seem to register as she danced around him, blocking and parrying and swiping at him though not once managing to get through his defenses. He wondered if she was really trying, as she never once did a flip to evade or surprise him. Then his mind reminded him that she was wearing only a shirt and probably didn't want him to see what she wasn't wearing underneath it.

By the time the sun was higher and the air was warm, pedestrian sounds drifting up from the streets below, they were both breathing hard and gleaming with sweat. They reached a mutual truce and went over to the edge to sit down. He looked at her footprints. "You're bleeding."

"I've had worse." She lifted a foot across her lap and peered at its sole. It was dark now with rooftop dirt and bleeding from more than a few cuts. "I've grown soft," she said quietly.

"It's not a bad thing," he pointed out.

"It could be," she replied. "We were neither of us really trying, were we? I suppose we don't want to be. Not given who we are and what we can do."

He nodded. "Will you get in trouble?"

"For staying out the night?" Yuki shrugged. "I doubt it. My okaasan thinks I'm too insular for a geisha. She'd probably be happy if I had a boyfriend."

"Ken."

"We didn't talk about that." She looked at him. "We slept, Ran-san. Or at least he did." Ran knew he was blushing as if she'd just picked his speculations from the night before out of his head. "I... couldn't sleep."

He tilted his head inquiringly at her.

"I thought you were dead. All of you. Especially Ken-san." She swallowed. "You know what it's like, right? Losing everything. Everyone. No human contact... you go a little crazy in your head, because there's no one you can talk to about the loss. Of everyone you loved."

"I drank," he offered. "Until I realized that it only made me hurt more. Then I wanted revenge. And Manx found me then."

Her hand reached out, white fingers touching momentarily on Ran's ponytail, sliding through the strands of hair. "This hair is new," Akayuki commented. "It's nice. Ken-san's is also longer. I've more or less spent the last two years alone... and now you're all alive, not dead after all. There are so many changes, things I've missed. I spent my night just watching him breathe."

"You love Ken."

"I loved him. And I lost him. Now I don't know... I'm a geisha, Ran-san. I'm an entertainer for rich men. I stay out drinking with them until the wee hours. I'm not a 'decent' girl anymore."

"Ken's no longer a naive young man," Ran felt obliged to point out. He pushed himself up and stood, stretching. He looked at Yuki. "Trust him."

"Him I trust," she replied, eyes meeting his. "It's not that that's the problem."

 

She already knew she wouldn't be able to have it both ways. Not Ken and a geisha's life both. And there was no denying that even now, the baby-soft sound of Ken's breathing at night held heavy in Akayuki's judgement as she sat on the counter in his bathroom, water running cool in the sink over one foot.

But she'd barely begun. She had time now that could be devoted to dance. She was developing that skill, that art. She was well-paid for her entertainment services, even if the budgeting of a geisha's lifestyle did balance that out. But she hadn't needed to once touch her rather sizeable Kritiker-paid bank account since she'd been assigned to Shimbashi. When her contacts within Kritiker had vanished, she hadn't been stupid--she'd promptly buried herself within the community and the role, laying low and going near nothing which would mark her as an agent. And she'd intended to stay there, in that safe position, for the length of her indeterminate future.

Then her dead teammates had been resurrected and somehow found her. It worried her that Kritiker's records still existed somewhere. They could be used to track down others. They could be used to track down Weiss.

She ran a brush lightly across the sole of her foot, dislodging dirt, checking the damage. It stung; she ignored it. The water swirled light brown.

"I'm still Kritiker, aren't I?" Akayuki sighed rhetorically. She pulled her foot out of the sink and boffed it dry on a hand towel, twisting to put its twin under the running water.

In the end, it still came down to that one thing--a life with Ken and Weiss, or a life as a geisha. And someday as a geisha she might find love, or a patron, and retire. Or she might not; she could grow old in the service of art, spending her life in the water trade, someday possibly becoming an okaasan of an okiya herself, acting as a go-between in the lives of younger geisha and customers.

Or--Ken.

She frowned, and scrubbed her foot.

 

By the time she was redressed, Ken was already working his shift inside the shop. They'd passed like ghosts in the hall of his apartment, wanting perhaps to touch, but not sure of how. She knocked at the interior door of the Koneko and opened it slightly, catching sight of Ran, Aya, and Ken. Ken stood, leaving the arrangement he'd been working on at the table, and came to her.

"I... have to go," Akayuki said unwillingly, looking down. "My okaasan will worry if I stay out too late. I have appointments this evening, after all."

Ken nodded. "I see. You've made your choice."

Dismayed by the bleakness in his voice, Akayuki glanced up, but now Ken was looking at the floor. "Ken-san," she said, touching her fingers to his soil-stained ones.

"It's okay," he said, looking quickly up at her, eyes bright. "I mean, I guess I knew what you'd choose. It's like Aya--RAN--said. If you have a chance to get out of this life, you should take it."

"Ken-san," she said again, helpless against his self-convincing rhetoric.

"Being a geisha's a good life, I guess, isn't it?" he rushed on. "You get to study dance, and wear pretty clothing all the time, right? I mean, it's not gymnastics, but it's great, isn't it?"

"Ken-san," she broke in firmly, catching his attention, or at least stilling it. "I have not decided. I need some time to think." She stared into his eyes, hoping he would get it. "I'm not running back to there to get away from you, from Weiss. I'm going back because there are commitments I need to fulfill and I can't stay here in your shirt all day."

"You...." He seemed reluctant to grasp the concept.

She softened. "I haven't made my decision, Ken-san," she explained. "I'm going back to the okiya to change clothes and to fulfill my appointments for the night. I can't just abandon what I've promised, can I?"

"You might stay?"

"Here or there," she replied. Her shoulders felt suddenly heavy. "I... it's freedom from my past, or rejoining it. That's not a light decision." She looked past him, to Ran putting together a bouquet of red and white roses, and to Aya beyond him, pulling a container of baby's breath out of the flower case. "They can't be the same for all of us."

Ken, following her gaze, seemed to know what she meant. "Aah," he agreed before turning back to her. "So you'll come back? At least to tell us your decision?"

"Mm," she nodded. She opened her purse and pulled out a pen and a Hello Kitty notepad. Scribbling quickly, she ripped out a page and gave it to Ken. His fingers were warm around hers as he took it. "This is my cel number."

He looked at it and smiled, folding it once before putting it in the pocket of his jeans. Then the warmth faded from his eyes. "I know I can't offer you much, not the glamor of being a geisha or anything, and I'm really screwed up in the head, everyone knows it, might as well shout it out to the universe, but--"

She interrupted. "But you love me. I know, Ken-san. I love you too. Or at least I did. But I need to make sure that I still do in the same way--that I'm not just echoing ghosts from two years ago. I need to decide if what I can have here is worth what being part of this again, of being part of Omi-san's Kritiker, will cost me."

He looked at her. And nodded. "Let me call you a cab," he said.

 

Author's Scribbling: For this new chapter I've stuck with the original character designs-- for the most part. I liked the original design of Aya (Ran) for the new animated arc, so he got to keep the ponytail. And looking at Ken's redesign, I noted his longer, straggly hair and thought it suited his mental/emotional place as of this writing. Once again I've borrowed from those who came before me. Going back to Yuki Scorpio's works, I've referenced her story Red Sea. I've also been noticeably influenced by Liza Dalby's book Geisha. Because when Weiss was reassigned to the mobile unit, what happened to Yuki? It seemed right that she become a true geisha. But because I like her better as a part of a quintet than as a solo agent, it became necessary that she reunite with Weiss, which could only be done by their returning to Tokyo. So after a ten-month gestation period, a new chapter of Lady Killer finally was born.

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