Spoilers: Basic knowledge of the series is assumed. Some spoilers for the anime. Feedback: Would be much appreciated. All comments, complaints, suggestions and questions welcome.

Notes: The lyrics are from Duvet by BoA, which is the opening theme of Serial Experiment Lain, and which I highly recommend as background music for the fic. This lovely song was my inspiration for finally finishing the story. It's available for downloading on a number of sites, or you can email me if you can't find it.

Thanks to Conni for her comments, and to Kat for her wonderful job pointing out my grammar, er, difficulties. All mistakes are mine, and very likely the result of ignoring her advice.

He allowed himself to lie still for a moment before his arm fell back, exposing him to the empty cavern of his dark room. His other hand rose to finger the small, throbbing pain at his shoulder. Cries had been stifled with his skin.

After another moment, he rose and methodically stripped the sheets. He worked in the dark, practiced enough to rely on feel and instinct. Once the bed was covered in crisp, clean linens and the soiled bundled up for washing, he lay back down. It was a ritual he'd adopted after the first time, something to distract himself from thinking, as much as the demand of his own fastidiousness.

He had needed to distract himself then. He had needed something to do with hands that had wanted to shake, because there had been a moment that first night when he'd felt the stirring of something beyond the startling heat of being touched, of something he would have sworn was dead inside of him. It had been a heady, frightening thing. Dangerous. Yet he had been unable, unwilling to kill it.

But it had died anyway, as he'd watched, bewildered and suddenly cold again, when he was left alone without a backward glance.

He wasn't sure exactly what it had been, that doomed, fragile thing. But he rather suspected it had been hope. Because in that brief time, while he'd let hands and lips and skin touch him, invade him, he'd been foolish enough to believe he'd been understood. That he was capable of being understood.

The sheets smelled of fresh, newly laundered scents, but he could still smell Youji on his skin. He entwined himself in them and slid into sleep.

He took a deep drag and slid an arm under his head as he lay back on the bed. When he felt his eyelids drooping, he stubbed out the cigarette. Sleep would take him soon, and so he closed his eyes.

Not thinking.

Aya dealt with their first customer, who wanted a simple seasonal arrangement. Youji looked up as Aya moved about gathering flowers for the woman's order. He could see the subtle difference in Aya's movements. Just a hint of sensuality on top of Aya's customary, restrained grace. Barely discernable, it would be gone by tomorrow.

He looked over as the door opened again, half expecting Manx. It had been weeks since their last mission, and, while he would never consider himself actually eager to take up his duties as a part of Weiss, there was a dull listlessness to these long stretches of waiting. But it wasn't Manx, it was a man in a business suit who wanted flowers for his wife. It was their anniversary, he told a noncommittal Aya.

Finished with his rather desultory sweeping, Youji went outside to smoke. Bored, he charmed their next customer into accepting a dinner invitation.

Manx was their sixth customer of the day.

"Nevertheless."

The doctor sighed, regarding the contained face of the young man sitting across from him and weighing the quiet of the voice. He had lost count of how many times he had made this argument, yet each time he was driven to try again out of a sense of responsibility and a strange kind of guilt for the girl he already viewed as dead and for her brother who still came each day to sit at her bedside. He let out another sigh, once again defeated. "As you say." He put his glasses back on and signed the order.

The young man did not thank him. He never did. He merely nodded slightly and left. From experience, the doctor knew the boy would spend the rest of the night sitting silently by his sister's side.

The doctor put the order in his outbox. He eyed his paper-covered desk. He had intended to stay tonight and get some work done. He glanced up at the door his visitor had vanished through and decided to go home and eat dinner with his family instead.

He picked the most beautiful and went home with her. He couldn't remember her name as he caressed her with hands and lips and then coupled with her on satin sheets, although he whispered words of love in the perfect shell of her ear.

They were nothing more than part of the game. He had only ever meant them once. And that once had taught him never to risk it ever again.

When the coffee was done, Youji took his mug upstairs with him, but before he left the kitchen their eyes met. Youji paused for a moment, studying the darkness behind the violet eyes before he continued on his way.

It was very late and the hallway was empty, the doors all closed. He stopped in his room and rummaged around until he found what he was looking for. He palmed the tube and crossed the hall to Aya's room. He entered without knocking, but paused after closing the door. He could see the vague outline of Aya on the bed. When a moment had passed in silence, he moved forward, as though permission had been granted.

He stripped off his clothes quickly and left them in a heap on the floor before opening the tube in his hand and squeezing the gel into his palm. His hand shook a little. It took only a few strokes and he was ready. There were no words, no tender touches. It wasn't until he was buried deep in Aya that he kissed him, tasting that dangerous sweetness. It wasn't until then that his hands caressed the smooth skin, roaming the plains of silk and steel.

It didn't last long. It never did. He lost himself in it, and then collapsed, tangled together with Aya's long, slender limbs. It could have been bliss. But as soon as he got his body under control, he rolled off Aya, and lay on his back, not touching Aya at all. When the room was silent of even their gasping breaths, he stood, not looking in the direction of the bed. He paused only to scoop up the bundle of his clothes before slipping from the room. Not a word had been spoken. Not a word ever was.

He could still remember the strange, thrilling shock that had gone through his body the first time Shion had let him hold it. For the first time since the world had exploded around him, he had felt the promise of the end of helplessness. The chance for control. But it had been a lie, like so much else. It had done nothing more than drown his soul in blood, leaving him floundering in a hell he could never have imagined.

He rose and began. There was no Aya, no Ran here, only the blade, and it moved with inhuman perfection. Ease hid painful discipline. It should have brought relief, that exact, exacting control. A victory over weak, pitiful flesh. A loss of self in the dance, the stripping of emotion, like flesh from bone. With each step, each form, he annihilated himself a little more.

A small, starved part of him clawed desperately for survival. He ignored it. The pattern he made was more real than he was.

Youji barely spoke to Aya at all. Maybe a few meaningless, teasing digs in front of the others, the necessary words while they were working. He didn't even like to let his thoughts linger on Aya. Most of the time it was easy enough. Aya made it easy. He was so quiet, so not present. He seemed to prefer to be ignored.

It hadn't always been like this. There had been a time when Youji would have said he and Aya were friends, even if the redhead might have denied it. There had been a time when it might have been Youji who tried to tease Aya out of whatever black mood had struck him.

But no longer. It was as though the silences of those darkness soaked moments he'd spent in Aya's bed had bled into their days. Still, most of the time it seemed impossible to believe he'd ever been buried in that cold- looking flesh. Impossible to believe that those lips could ever be anything but hard and thin.

And when his thoughts did linger in directions they weren't suppose to go, if he found himself dwelling on the memory of the unbelievable silkiness of Aya's skin or the intoxicating way he smelled, he had only to think of Asuka. Her memory killed all other thoughts. His heart was empty of everything but her painful ghost. As it should be. But, most of the time, he just didn't let himself think at all.

If he slept with Aya, it was no different from all the other times he slept in someone else's bed. Meaningless. Pure animal pleasure.

He never let himself wonder why he fled Aya's bed so quickly.

He never let himself wonder why proud, solitary Aya allowed any of it in the first place.

They fell silent when he spoke. And although Ken cast him a dubious glance and Omi looked uncertain, they had learned to trust Aya's leaps of logic. They did as he said.

Four nights later, they successfully took out their targets, and the four of them returned home unhurt, if with a little more blood splattering their already saturated souls. Aya listened to their voices afterward, hearing in them the traces of excitement, of the wild, adrenaline-fueled exuberance that affected them after they had completed yet another mission, and found themselves once again still alive.

He had never shared in that. He never felt anything like it. He left them to it, washing and changing quickly and slipping out of the apartment. He had not yet visited Aya today. He ignored the questioning, reproachful looks that followed him out the door.

He had never wanted to lead them. Most of the time, he didn't interfere, taking the tasks that suited him, doing only what needed to be done.

He had never wanted to be responsible for them. He did his best to push them away, to make sure they acted on their own choices, to make sure they didn't rely on him.

But it had proven impossible. Impossible to let them fall when he could reach out a hand and shove them from the edge. Impossible to entirely ignore the looks that Omi and even Ken sometimes gave him, seeking guidance, reassurance. Affirmation.

Still, he resisted. He had already been suffocating under the weight of his burdens before he had ever met them. And except for Aya-chan's smile, except for revenge, the only possible thing he could ever imagine himself wanting was to be free.

He sat on the chair beside her bed, listening to her silence. He thought he ought to speak to her, but tonight he couldn't bring himself to. Speaking, even to her, was hard. It hadn't always been so. He hadn't been particularly quiet as a child, although he'd never matched her in sheer chattiness.

But things had changed. Darkness had swept every cherished thing away, and he'd been afraid to open his mouth, afraid that if he opened his mouth and let sound come out, he'd never be able to stop screaming. Now . . . now, he wasn't sure. The screams had been buried far deeper inside, but it was as though something in him had frozen. As though he'd forgotten how to do anything but hold it all in.

It didn't matter. What did he have to say to her--to anyone--now, after all? He would sooner cut out his tongue than tell her what he'd done this night.

He drew his legs up and wrapped his arms around them, resting his cheek on his knees. He closed his eyes to hide her blank, lifeless face. All he needed was to hear her breathe.

He was well aware of them before they saw him. A gang of punks who fancied themselves predators. He ignored them as they gathered around his bench, ignored their leering stares.

He didn't listen to the words their taunting voices spewed, taking in only the increasingly strident tones, the looseness and lack of restraint that spoke of alcohol and other, more dangerous, things.

He only grew interested when he saw the glitter of steel. It flashed, and he met the crazed, furious eyes of the one who wielded it. He'd seen that look before.

But there was no mission this time to give him purpose. No teammates to watch over. Nothing to make him care.

He smiled slightly and he didn't move.

But someone else did, and the strike of the knife went wild, gouging a long, shallow cut over his heart and across his chest, rather than punching through flesh. Aya felt nothing but the rush of disappointment.

"Fuck!" One of them was screaming. "What are you doing?"

The knife wielder mumbled something, the mad light in his eyes dying.

"We don't want to fucking kill him! Look at him! We can have more fun than that."

Someone put their hands on him then, and that was beyond what he would tolerate. Fighting them off wasn't hard, and would-be predators fled like frightened rabbits. The hardest thing was keeping the killing force of his reflexes in check.

Afterward, he walked home, the darkness hiding the blood staining his slashed shirt. It started to rain when he was halfway there, and the night was suddenly cold. Which explained why his hands were shaking. And maybe even why something hard and jagged seemed to be lodged in his chest.

His hand fell and he turned away, to his own dark room.