Amor Fictus

Written by Sakki

Anything you haven't heard of belongs to me.

Anything you have heard of, doesn't.

There was a moment in which Ran's heart stopped beating, as if preparing him for the death that was inevitably going to come. But it started again, much faster than before, sputtering on occasion as he tried to breathe.

The gun was a handgun: a simple, small handgun. It seemed impossible that something so small and dark could bring about the pain and death that it did. Ran stared down the barrel into the fathomless depths of the bullet chamber.

It was loaded, he thought. It had to be loaded.

"You're possibly the stupidest person alive," Crawford said, standing perfectly still. "Instead of going to the police, you came to me. You came to me to say that you had found a hole in my alibi. You came to the one person – the only person – who would want to kill you over something like that."

It was loaded. It had to be. Crawford would not carry an empty gun around.

"Why would you do that?"

Ran slowly raised his eyes from the gun to his teacher's face, trying to keep from backing up. A question. He had been asked a question. He should answer the question, he thought.

But he couldn't.

"Well? Answer me." The gun moved, and Ran flinched. He opened his mouth once, twice, then closed it and tried to swallow.

Why couldn't he speak?

"Don't tell me it's an obsession." Crawford's sudden tiny grin didn't match the icy fury in his eyes. "Did you come to tell me this because you wanted me to know I was beaten? On your terms?"

No, that wasn't it. That couldn't be it. Tell him that's not it.

"Instead of waiting until I was in jail to gloat, you had to come for a one-on-one confrontation to prove to me that you were better." The grin was growing, becoming more sinister. "Your absolute fixation on beating me in any way made you think that coming to tell me I had failed would verify your superiority."

Crawford lifted the gun slightly so it was now pointing at Ran's collarbones.

"Am I right?"

Ran felt himself take a step back. No, no, that wasn't it, that wasn't right. He didn't want to prove he was better, he wanted to prove Crawford was a killer, he wanted to put a killer behind bars, he wanted to stop more people from dying, he wanted to prove he was right, and Crawford was wrong.

Crawford was right.

"Nobody proves me wrong."

A sharp bark of laughter startled Ran, and he tripped over his own feet. He fumbled to keep from falling and grabbed onto a desk. His eyes were ever locked on Crawford, keeping the man in his sight at all times.

The grin was gone.

"I am right. You're so arrogant that you'd allow your own pride to be your downfall."

Crawford was moving now, taking fast strides toward Ran. The latter stumbled back, hitting desks as he went. Halfway down the row they both stopped; first Crawford, then Ran.

"I'm not surprised you never told. You'd never let anybody know a teacher had beaten you up, would you."

Ran's fingers found the edge of a desk. He grabbed on tight enough to make his knuckles white.

"Your egotistical thinking was the only thing keeping me from being fired. Did you actually think I would kill you over something like that?"

What?

The confused look Ran gave Crawford made the other man snort softly in contempt.

"I was angry. I hurt you. I proved my point to you. But this is not the only school. There are other places to work."

"Your record," Ran managed, his voice so thin and rough it scared him.

"I have contacts. There are strings I can pull. It would not be difficult to convince people you attacked me unprovoked, and I was only fighting in self-defense."

The words stung. Flames ran up and down Ran's arms and legs, making him feel weak.

It would have been easy, so easy, to have all of this never happen.

Why couldn't he see it?

Ran turned his frightened gaze into a powerful, dark glare. There was still fear in his eyes, yes; but now it was covered up by a thin layer of rage. This man talked so casually about how superior he was, about how easy it was to cover up pain and death and hurt. It made Ran want to rip the gun out of the man's hands and turn it on him, open fire on him, blast that composed look off his face with a single round. Ran made to insult him, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.

Again he could not speak.

"This is a change," he heard Crawford say. "You're angry now? Angry about what? About how simple it would be for me to make you the aggressor in a situation like this?"

Speak, Ran thought to himself. Go on, speak, say something, say anything. Just speak, for God's sake.

"Or are you angry because you don't want to be afraid? That's what leads a lot of people to become murderers unintentionally." Crawford smiled again, another tiny grin that made icy scorpions run up Ran's spine. "You want to kill me, is that it? The way I want to kill you. Only more violently. More brutally. Tell me, Ran, is that what you want? Do you want to hold this gun in your hands and shoot me?"

A whisper was all that Ran could respond with. A whisper with no words in it, a whisper that flew away on wings faster than he could reach out and catch it.

"It would be murder. You'd kill me, almost totally unprovoked. You would go to jail and live out your life in a cold cell, with nobody there to help you or comfort you." Again the smile vanished. "Is my death worth the rest of your life?"

His bravado wavered. Ran felt his legs starting to shake under him, as if they couldn't support his weight anymore.

And suddenly, they didn't need to.

There was a blur of off-white before his eyes, and then there was a solid brick of something against his stomach, lifting him off the floor with more ease than should have been possible. His feet didn't leave the ground, but they could have. He found his body weightlessly rising and falling backwards.

For a moment he thought he was passing out, drifting into a dreamworld beyond imagination.

His back hit the floor with a solid thump, and whatever little air was left in his lungs was forced out. Pain exploded in his stomach, making him curl up around his hands as they clawed desperately at his shirt. Ran struggled for air, alternately coughing and gasping when he could.

A shadow fell across his already darkening vision.

"Worthless."

Through eyes clouded by pain, Ran looked up and saw the shaded figure of Crawford standing over him, saw the empty black hole of the gun barrel, saw bright headlights and a girl on the ground.

Out in the parking lot, Ken pulled on a strand of hair nervously, causing it to come out in his fingers. The tiny pinprick of pain didn't bother him; he was too busy being worried. Next to him, Yohji drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The sunglasses prevented any visible emotion from being seen, but by the frequency of the drumming it could be read that anxiety resided within this man. It was more obvious in the other one.

Eventually, Ken unleashed a frustrated sigh and reached for the door handle.

"I'm going in."

"He told us to stay here, you know. He gets pissy when people don't do what he asks."

"Yeah, well, he said twenty minutes. It's been more than that."

Yohji shrugged and pressed the unlock button. Ken opened the door and stepped out, limping slightly when he put weight on his bad leg.

"If I'm not back with him in ten minutes, call the police."

"All right." Yohji seemed unsure, but Ken's flat determination dispelled most doubts. "Ten minutes."

Ten minutes like a thousand eternities.

Ran knew that about now he should be either pleading for his life or already dead. If Crawford fired right now, the bullet would go in through one side of his head and out the other. The slightest movement could either make it go in through his temple or through his eye. The former was instant death; the latter was drawn out and hellish.

One twitch and he could die. Would die.

His breath was still coming in heaving gasps.

"Are you going to beg for your life?" asked Crawford, his finger resting calmly on the trigger. "You didn't before, but you weren't in quite as much danger then."

If he could have spoken, he would have. His voice remained locked in his throat, locked in his stomach, away from the world and the man he needed to speak to.

There was a click, and with a tiny pang of fear Ran realized that it was the gun, and that if he heard another click it would mean that he was dead.

Red crossed his vision, strands of hair like streams of blood.

The white shadow of Crawford was suddenly getting closer. He tried to draw back but the pain in his stomach was great, too great, for him to overcome.

He was going to die, he was going to be shot, the last thing he was going to see would be his teacher's face, so angry and sadistic and gleeful.

The gun was gone.

Instead of ice cold metal, he felt the faint touch of chilly skin against his face. The threads of red were brushed off of his cheeks, and now he could see the hard glint in Crawford's eyes as clearly as he had seen his death.

Pain dulled his senses, but it was bordered by confusion.

"Perhaps if you weren't such an idiot, this could have ended much more peacefully." Eyes like setting suns glinted with dark humor and disdain. "Even mercifully, for both of us."

Crawford stood up then, and aimed the gun at Ran's head once more.

There was a click.

It was much louder than the first click.

But it did not come from the gun.

"Ran?!"

Above him, Ran saw Crawford turn his head toward the door. A flash of something crossed the man's face.

He lifted the gun

turned it

and fired it

into

Ken.

The sound of the gunshot echoed so loudly in Ran's ears that it drowned out every thought he had at that moment.

A faint gasp escaped Ken's lips. He reached down with one hand and felt his stomach.

Wet and hot.

Ran saw him slowly sink to the floor through the legs of the desks.

His eyes widened.

She was lying so still, her whole body wet, her eyes closed like she was sleeping and her skin still warm and red from the heat of running and from the blood that was splattered across her clothes, the blood from where the car had hit her and split her skin open and she was dead no matter how many times he called her name and he promised, promised, promised to himself and to her and to everything there that she wasn't dead, that she was going to come back and be alive, and then she didn't and he remembered screaming and sirens and someone calling his name, someone asking who he was, and a thousand questions he couldn't answer and the tears he didn't shed.

No.

"NO!"

His voice returned to him in such force that it startled Crawford, who looked down at him.

One moment of distraction.

Fingernails dug into the hand that held the gun, drawing blood within seconds from their ferocity. Wild rage consumed Ran, devoured every inch of him and filled him with a strength he never knew was there.

Kill. Kill. You killed. I will kill. They killed. I have killed.

His fists rained down on Crawford, smashing away the gun, breaking the bones, bruising the muscles, fulfilling the desires of demons and animals. Screaming pain and hatred rammed daggers into his mind.

He had to kill Crawford. Crawford killed Ken. He had to kill this man. This man killed his sister, his parents, his life, his soul.

There would be blood spilled when

"N-NO!"

there was a cry that made him stop.

Ken was barely supporting himself on one arm, the other wrapped around the bloody expanse on his stomach.

"Don't…kill him!" he tried to say, and wound up coughing a splatter of blood. "Don't…be a moron…!"

It was a matter of life or death and Ken almost seemed to be making a joke.

Now it was his moment of hesitation, his one moment of distraction, that allowed Crawford, the nemesis, the enemy and the bad guy, the one who caused this all, to slip away from Ran's fists and seize his scattered weapon.

He brought it around to Ran's head.

Ken's eyes widened. He tried to lunge forward, tried to stop Crawford, but he couldn't move.

Ran saw death, light, a smiling girl with blue hair.

There was a click.

"DROP THE WEAPON!"

And everything froze, just like that.

---

The air was bitingly sharp and crisp that morning, forcing people to wear scarves and gloves if they decided to go outside. Above the buildings the sky was clear and blue, pale where the sun was and royal where it wasn't.

Outside a small café, two men stood in the relative safety of a doorway. Neither was wearing a scarf, but one did have a coat.

"God, it's cold out here. Can't we wait inside?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because we don't have to. It's not open, anyway."

"I could always get that girl in there to let us in, you know…"

"No."

Silence.

"…then can /I/ go wait inside?"

"Fine. Be a wuss."

"I am very manly, thankyouverymuch. I just don't like freezing to death. The ladies understand it."

"I'm sure they do."

The taller man turned and winked to the girl inside the café, and she quickly ran over to open the door.

This left one man standing in the relative safety of a doorway.

Nervousness and impatience intermingled around the man. He tapped one foot on the ground, then tapped one finger on his coat, then hummed off-key to a song he'd never heard. A minute was an hour; an hour was a year; everything depended on one of those minute-hour-years to come and go at the precise moment it was needed.

A third man suddenly came dashing down the street. He nearly tripped over his own feet and then narrowly avoided a collision with a chair in an attempt to stop running. The man in the doorway raised a single slender eyebrow.

"Graceful."

"Shut up. At least I wasn't late."

"I'll give you that." The man in the doorway looked out at the sky. "No snow today, I think."

"No really? You should be a weather guy. You'd be dead on every time, I'm sure."

"…idiot."

He stepped away from the doorway and started off down the street. The third man followed him, limping slightly on one leg.

"Hey, wait up! You stupid moron." He dropped himself across the other man's shoulders and grinned. "Get a sense of humor, Ran."

"Get a sense of tact, and then maybe."

Ken snickered and squeezed Ran's shoulders once, affectionately. Ran returned the favor by ruffling Ken's hair, then ducked out from under the other's weight and took off down the street.

He was followed by the brunette, who yelped in indignation at his hair being disturbed and laughed maniacally as he pursued Ran.

The sun sparkled in the air, decorating the laughter of young love as it ran onward to another place.

Another set of trials, as well.

But there was something the sunlight knew, the sky knew, the trees and leaves and snowfall knew.

Kindness prevails in times of great need. Whether it is a kindness on the street or a kindness of love, or even a kindness that can be followed by pain and hurt, it will give others hope and open up doors.

Ran and Ken continued running down the roads, learning from the fresh snow that brushed against their faces with the breeze.

-end-