Death rang with a finality Sena had never understood.
In vague memories, he could remember the deaths of his father and sister, but he could never remember the face of their murderer. He could hear the sound of the gun being fired when he closed his eyes and willed the memory into being. The voice of his father, its tone and inflection, his words, he remember exactly -- but he did not remember the face of their murderer. It was the only piece of the memory that did not fit into the puzzle. And because he could not remember the face of that person, their deaths had never had a sense of finality for him.
But it was not the same for Kyou. Kyou was dead, and it was final. Nothing would bring him back. Sena had seen him, pierced through on the same blade that killed Toudou, he had seen the warm blood still dripping down their bodies. Something so solid and real was too hard to be denied, yet it did not make it any easier to accept.
His death weighted on Sena. The feeling that it could have been prevented if not for him kept it lingering over him constantly. He could barely function at all, held down by such an overpowering feeling of guilt that clamped onto him like shackles. He lay in his room, arms spread out at his sides, eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Exhaustion threatened to close his eyes, but he fought against it -- whenever his eyelids drifted closed for even a brief moment, the vivid image of Kyou, dead, flashed before him.
The pain was still fresh. It was days ago, three days exactly, a nagging voice reminded him, that they had found him dead. It was that next morning that Youji and Ken returned from Europe, and it was yesterday afternoon that Ken had accused him of it being his fault that Kyou had died.
He was right. It was his fault. Had he stayed in his rooms, had he never been so stupid as to leave and go against the orders of Persia, Kyou would not have died. Kyou would have never come to his rescue when the group of Toudou's followers were hunting him down; he would not have ever revealed himself as the other member of Weiss. Ken was right -- it was his because of him that Kyou had to die.
Sena pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. Kyou had tried to comfort him that morning. While Rex and Aya had treated him like a child, put him under house arrest, Kyou had tried to talk to him. But he had brushed away his words without listening to their meaning.
When he closed his eyes, he saw Kyou dead. When he opened them, he remembered Kyou alive, all of the good moments they had shared. Even in Weiss, even carrying the plague they did, life had moved on in such an ordinary, simple way. It even seemed like, and Sena knew that Kyou would have laughed at him if he had ever told him, that they had some strange family unit. He had thought so when they had first been given the mission at Koua Academy, and he and Kyou began to masquerade as students, and Aya as a teacher. Pretending to act normal had almost made him feel normal, for even a brief moment.
He remembered when he had first come to Weiss, and how strange it had felt to be with them. But Kyou knew the feeling and understood it; he, too, had experience what it felt to be the 'new guy.' Sena had been able to find comfort in him that he could find in no one else. Not in Youji, Youji who spent each night with a new girl and seemed somehow distant, even from Aya and Ken. Not in Ken, who had treated him as an outside from the very beginning, and had never accepted him. Not in Aya, who was not abrupt or distant from him, but who simply did not possess the air of a man that could comfort another -- he found it all in Kyou.
But Kyou was dead, and he was alone. Again, he was the outsider. Ken blamed him for what had happened to Kyou, Aya was angry with him for his disobeying of orders, and Youji was far too absorbed in his own world to ever glimpse into another.
He rubbed his palms against his eyes, cursing the tears that refused to stop. It felt like he had not stopped crying since he had seen Kyou there, dead, fixed there in a timeless pose against Toudou. It felt that way, but there were moments when their were no tears -- and it was through sheer sense of dignity that they did not fall. He refused to cry in front of Aya or Ken. Aya, because he did not want to let the older man down more than he already had, and Ken, because he did not want him intruding on a pain he knew Ken thought petty. But when he was alone, it was hard not to cry.
He remembered most of all, in all his memories of Kyou, one moment they had shared, one fleeting moment of happiness amid the harsh life Weiss demanded of them. It was after a mission, one Aya had been able to join them on due to a wound, one Youji had not deemed worth his time, and Ken had sat out for the purpose of staying with Aya to 'make sure he didn't do anything stupid.' Rex and Aya had not wanted Kyou and Sena to go alone; it was the first time either of them had been given such a responsibility to themselves. But after a certain amount of coaxing, and perhaps even begging, she had relented, with the approval of Persia.
They had taken Aya's car, with the grudging permission of its rigid owner. The mission itself past without so much as a single glitch. It was the journey back that was another thing entirely. It was raining that night, and taking the back roads to divert attention from a strange car patrolling down the streets in the dead of night, they had been trapped in a hollow area of the road where mud and water mixed freely. It took hours of pushing and shoving on both their parts, but finally the car had been able to break free, and they drove home, laughing about how ridiculous it was that the mission should pass beautifully, but the drive back be the one to cause them problems.
The car itself was the problem when they returned home. White as it was, it was covered nearly from top to tire in mud. Kyou joked that Aya would have both their necks if they left his car as dirty it was, and so at five in the morning, while Ken and Aya slept peacefully within the shop not knowing what they were doing, Sena and Kyou had washed the car.
But it was not their jokes and laughter that Sena remembered. It was when he had slipped on the pavement, slick with water and soap, and Kyou had leaped forward to catch him. He remembered the feel of arms wrapping around his waist, and Kyou's voice as he cursed; he had slipped as well. He remembered falling, and feeling as though things were happening suddenly in slow motion -- Kyou twisted to fall on his back, Sena pressed on top of him. They laid there on the pavement, still laughing, limbs tangled and clothes soaked through.
Then the laughter stop, and Kyou kissed him.
Nothing changed after that brief moment. It was as though nothing had happened at all. But sometimes Kyou would smile at him in a way Sena knew was reserved only for him, in a way that he knew Kyou only shared with so few. Sometimes they would spend nights together in the basement, watching television or just passing the hours by as best as they could, sitting side by side, limb to limb. The moments were far and few between, but they had always meant something to him.
But there would never be any moments like those again.
Suddenly he could not stop crying. He held his breath, clenched his eyes shut, but the tears seeped through and a strangled sob still escaped him. He scarcely breathed a moment, afraid that someone had heard him, but it did not last. The sobs still came and there was nothing to stop them.
The door knob turned slightly, paused a moment, and began to turn again. Sena scrambled up, pushing himself back against the wall his bed was pressed against, his back in the corner, knees drawn up. He wiped his hands hastily across his face, a vain attempt to hide that he had been crying. Still the door opened, and the light from the hall made it so that only the silhouette stood clear in the frame. Then the voice came.
"What's going on, brat?"
Ken, he thought miserably, the only one that would have referred to him so fondly; the only person he least wanted to see. He stood there a moment, as though surveying his surroundings, deliberating on whether or not he should come in. Finally he spoke again.
"Sounded like crying--"
"I'm fine," Sena said, and it came out as harsher of a snap than he had meant for it to. He swallowed. "Fine," he repeated.
He waited for him to leave, to shrug in that careless way of his and to leave him alone to his grief, but he neither shrugged nor left him alone. He came into the room, bare feet padding softly across the floorboards, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Aya said I was being an ass," he murmured, "and I was."
Sena lifted his head from his arms slightly, watching Ken from the corner of his eye. It took him a moment to realize that he was attempting to apologize -- as much of an apology as Ken was able to muster. Sena wondered if Aya had told him to come and apologize, and then wondered why Aya would have even cared.
But he said nothing, neither accepting or disregarding the apology. There was nothing to be said. He felt that if he tried to speak he would only cry, and it was far humiliating enough to have been found crying at all.
Silence reigned for so long that Sena wondered why Ken did not just get up and leave. He seemed the type of person too easily frustrated to attempt to make peace with someone, or even be so much as a comforting presence. But he still sat, hands clasped between his knees, head lowered and regarding something in the distance silently.
"You were crying about Kyou, weren't you," Ken said suddenly, and it was not a question, but a quiet statement. Sena tore his gaze from him.
"What do you care?" he muttered, voice still strained from his sobs.
"Don't snap at me, brat," Ken replied half-heartedly. He was trying, Sena realized, in the only way he knew, to be comforting. He knew he should have appreciated the effort, but the blame Ken placed on him for Kyou's death had not yet left him, and he doubted it ever would.
"Listen," Ken said, cramming a hand into his hair, "I didn't mean--"
"You were right," Sena interrupted, softly. "It is my fault he died."
Ken said nothing, and he stumbled on. "If I'd just listened to orders and hadn't gone to the school, Kyou would have never had to come to my rescue. He'd still be alive if I hadn't been so stupid."
He was crying again, and dignity be damned. He did not bother to brush away the tears or hide them from Ken. Pretending was too hard.
"Hey..." Ken fumbled for the words to say. "Don't cry."
"Kyou's dead," Sena said fiercely, voice muffled because of the arm pressed against his face. "Don't tell me what to feel. He's dead, and it's my fault."
"If you want to get technical," Ken began, not restraining the irritation in his voice, "Kyou's the one that fucked up." Sena looked up at him sharply, and Ken plunged onward. "He had orders to let Aya deal with you. But he didn't listen. He went on his own and screwed up."
"You--"
"People fuck up, kid, okay? Both of you screwed up, and yeah, he's dead because of it. But what good's it gonna do you to just sit around pointing out the blame?"
Sena said nothing, and Ken jammed a hand through his hair, sighing.
"I'm not saying... don't be upset, or don't cry... I'm just saying... try to understand, you know?"
"I don't understand," Sena whispered.
He did not understand why Kyou had to die at all, why any of them had to be at fault for what happened; why it hurt so much to think of Kyou and to know he was never going to see him again. Ken said he was dead, and it struck with a finality that silenced his sobs and ended his tears. He only stared blankly at the wall, the words repeating in his head. Kyou was dead. Dead. He would never speak again, never laugh, never breathe; there would never be another moment like there was that night, and never any of those times spent together without a single care in the world. Nothing would ever be the same again. That was the finality of death.