Embrace of Darkness

<A/N: This is Ken being, well, morbid and depressive. I don't think I like this Ken, but I haven't written a YoKen before, and it was a bit too emotional for a YoRan.

Disclaimers: I'm not Ken. This may be in the first person, but honest, I'm not him. Or anyone he knows. Cause he's owned by someone else and he or she doesn't let him out to play often enough for me to kidnap him. So, no, I don't own Ken or any of his little friends.

Warnings: angst, yaoi, >

Darkness swallows you whole. Close your eyes, and it's there. It stalks you in every shadow, visits each night. You can't escape it. All you can do is learn to accept it, and, sometimes, embrace it.

If only the darkness was all I wished to embrace. Heh.

He's so easy to watch. Easy mannered, easy going, easy on the eye… Easy. Yohji Kudoh summed up in a single word. Notoriously easy. Are there any women over eighteen left in Tokyo he hasn't been with?

This bitterness isn't good for me, I know. I'll get ulcers, or something like that. That would be ironic: an assassin getting stomach ulcers not from work-related stress but from angsting over a certain fellow assassin. I wonder if Kritiker have any policies on stress relief? Yohji seems to have found his own way of dealing with it.

The worst part? Meeting the girls the next morning. Smiling and offering them coffee, trying to find a new way of saying that Yohji's never going to speak to them again if he can help it. You can't help but wonder what drives a man through so many women. What is he looking for? What is he hiding from?

Once, I made the mistake of picking up Yohji's leftovers. Chauvinist, moi? So sue me. That kind of girl deserves derogatory names, and besides, flirting is meat and drink to Yohji. We went out once or twice, she talked me into bed, one of us called out his name in the heat of the moment and neither of us could work out which. Yeah, not a healthy relationship. Ended pretty sharply.

Aya's glowering at me. Of course he is, he doesn't have any other facial expressions. Fine, that's not true, but you wouldn't know it to look at him. Omi's frowning at him and shooting me concerned looks. That boy's too damn perceptive for his own good. Either that or I'm too obvious. Watching Yohji again.

No matter what they say about 'white hunters' and 'dark beasts', we are the creatures of the night. Each of us, for our own reasons, embraced the darkness. There are calluses on my knuckles from gutting man after man with my bugnuks. In the dead of night, in the darkness, I wondered why I do something I hate so much. And that little voice asks 'are you sure you hate it?'

We are Gods. We take life as cruelly as any deity. Except gods can give life as well as taking it away. Heh. I'll bet Yohji's given life to several by now. Say, on average, he sleeps with three hundred women a year. Condoms are what, 99% safe, provided they don't break? That's three kids per annum already, not counting any split condoms, and completely overlooking whether he uses them at all. Okay, so there's other methods, but nothing's fool proof. There's got to be at least one Kudoh junior by now. So, Yohji's a God. Giver of life and death.

It's intoxicating. I can admit that, even in the summer sunlight, surrounded by screaming teenage girls. The adrenaline is a real buzz. It's exhilarating. It's a game of life and death, it's winner takes all, it's him or you. It's exciting, it's stimulating, it's electrifying.

But when I stare at the bloody claws in the ducky moonlight, it's fun. And that scares me more than any murderer or rapist I've met. I scare me more than they do.

I'm not alone. Aya does it for his sister, Omi because it's all he knows, but Yohji and I, we were sucked into it. We don't have an excuse. We were dead and Kritiker kindly loaned us these new lives. And one day, they'll take them back.

Has the day really passed that quickly? The light disappears almost as soon as it comes, but the darkness lasts for infinity. The closed sign on the door, the grate down, the video playing in a dark room. Claws on and out into the night. Funny, Yohji and I used to turn down missions on a more regular basis than the others, though Omi lost out several times due to his age. Now, it's always us. I guess now Aya-chan's awake Aya isn't so interested in the money and Omi only takes enough to get by, unless he thinks we'll get ourselves into trouble.

You know what bothers me? Not the targets. I can convince myself we're doing a public service, taking those guys out. It's the guards that bother me. Most of them have no idea what kind of a man they're working for. They're the people we're fighting to protect, really, and I've just slit another throat, blood soaking my shoes.

We're playing a waiting game tonight. I hate it when we wait in the darkness. The others think I'm impatient and impulsive. They also think I'm not all that bright. Honestly, I just don't like thinking. I prefer to act, to keep myself occupied, to do anything to keep myself from thinking about my life, like I am now. I tried, once, to think back to my days as a J-League player. All I can remember clearly it Kase's betrayal. It was one of the happiest times of my life, playing in the team, and I've lost those sunny memories under the weight of a thousand nights of darkness.

Yohji's fingers caress the nape of my neck as a signal and I shiver. Sometimes the desire is tangible. I want to pin him to the ground and take him, jade eyes slitting with ecstasy and my body tells him I know what he goes through. I want to know that whatever he's looking for, he'll find it in me. I want to know what devils he's running from, and I want to slay them for him. Maybe he'll be able to slay mine.

Together we 'slay' the poor sod Kritiker decreed should die. Yohji's wrapped his wire around his throat and I took his heart out, up under the ribs. I could feel it beat in my hand as my claws tore it to shreds. Yohji savoured the pulse in his neck in the same way as he tightened the noose he created, using his hands as well to squeeze the life out of the man.

He's exhausted. It takes it out of him, killing. I hate that it does the opposite to me, and I fight to keep from smiling down at the mangled pulp at our feet. I'm so energised I can hardly keep from bouncing on my heels. It's dark, and I enjoyed that. Sometimes I wonder if we were sent out during the day whether I'd enjoy it as much. I don't want to know the answer. Being able to blame the darkness is a luxury I can ill afford, but I'd rather cling to comforting lies and acknowledge what I might be turning into.

I don't know why tonight. It's a moonless night and the stars are shrouded by light pollution. It's the most velvety kind of darkness, sensuous and seductive. I follow Yohji into his room. His silence seems to tell me exactly what I want to hear: yes.

A million girls fade from his arms as he collapses into mine. I kiss him, hard, and he responds with vigour I never thought I'd see in him, not after a kill. His taut and tense body uncoils against mine, hard and soft in all the right places. A thousand fantasies come true as we collapse to the futon. We're still in our assassin gear, and I know I smell of a dead man, but it turns me on. We survived. It's an instinct as old as humanity. When danger threatens, procreate. It may be your last chance. We're safe now, but my legs are tight around his waist and I'm riding him hard. A hundred thoughts rush through my mind, peaking the moment before that blessed silence of climax. Gasping and panting and sweating we lie in silence, grateful for a moment's bright release from the never-ending darkness. A single word destroys it all.

"Asuka…"

He's wiped out, limp against the mattress. He doesn't object when I stand and dress. He understands. I'm angry. I'm heartbroken. I'm gutted. He doesn't have to say another word. Every single dream I cherished, every thought I clung to to get me through this ever-cursed darkness, was a lie. The only person that could make Yohji happy is a dead girl.

No one understands. I want to get out. I want to walk in the sun. I want to leave this darkness behind. I enjoy killing. I'm turned on by the rush of power that accompanies it. I look forwards to each new mission, finding new ways to embrace the darkness.

The problem with embracing the darkness is it embraces you back. The night is a jealous lover, and won't share you with the day. The darkness cradles you and cares for you; it hides the faults and conceals the flaws. The darkness allows you to be someone you aren't, as no one can see who you really are. The light hurts, blinding, and the darkness is a cool and blessed relief when you've been stared at and scrutinised for so long. So you collapse into that embrace of darkness, seduced by softness and secrecy, until you realise that you can no longer see yourself, and you are lost.

I am lost.