Ordinary People
A Weiss Kreuz fanfic by laila

+ the naming of cats

Eight twenty-five. On top of everything else he had chosen quite the wrong hospital, and Youji couldn't help but feel that somehow said everything a guy would have ever needed to know about Ken Hidaka.

His hair was wet. The driving rain whipped at his cheeks, and left his curls hanging dark and heavy about his face. Raindrops corrugated the surface of the pond; trees, their leaves slick and heavy, bowed beneath the weight of the water. The hospital loomed up from behind a veil of rain, blank-faced and monumental as something out of a movie, the light that shone harsh and cold from its windows somehow only making it look all the more forbidding. Youji shivered, and told himself it was from the chill: how to explain, then, why he lingered by the pond, watching the play of the lights on the glazed streets?

Cars grumbled on the clogged avenue, their headlights smears upon the paving; a pair of doctors sulked by the hospital doors, cigarettes in hand. Youji half-turned at the sudden tick of a woman's footsteps as a young office worker, a sodden evening paper held over her dark and glossy head, scuttled past on impractical heels. He wondered who she was here for.

(And dread, heavy and unyielding as a stone: his stomach curled like a clenched fist.)

I'm terribly sorry to bother you so late in the day – and he'd thought the voice, distorted by the telephone, sounded familiar. Had thought it was an ex at first, or a prospective girlfriend, a bold young woman hopefully canvassing for a date – but we've a young man in our emergency department who has no ID save for a receipt from your store—

And Youji had thought only, oh, God. What's he gotten himself into this time? Like a parent, wearied by a wayward son.

—I appreciate this may sound peculiar, but has your friend ever called himself 'Siberian'?

Then the fear. He felt disconnected. He thought of the word estranged. The rain crawled slow and cold and ticklish down his cheeks, the nape of his neck, like a finger: he hadn't trusted himself to drive. This place had nothing to do with any of them.

It was the wrong hospital. Not their hospital, the police hospital, which would know how to deal with them: it would have to, what with the sister tucked neatly away in her clean and clinical cell. The wrong place and the wrong time and just how much trouble could Ken have gotten into, anyway, on an afternoon off? His condition is stable, the stranger on the telephone had said: they both knew all she meant was please be careful. I told him, Youji thought uselessly, I told him he rode that bike too fast—he didn't know it was the bike's fault and almost hoped it wasn't: Ken loved that bike. He didn't know anything. He only knew that, somehow, Ken had been hurt, and here he was with a sports bag full of Ken's possessions. That was all.

Ken's in hospital, he had told Aya, giving the man nothing but a newsreader's cold neutrality: Ken could have been anyone to him, or nobody. Saint Luke's.

I'll call Omi, Aya had said.

Don't, Youji had heard himself saying, smiling helplessly in the face of Aya's confusion, understated yet obvious. Just don't.

Even at the time he didn't know why he'd said it. He certainly didn't know why now when it would only cause trouble for all of them, when he wished Omi were here, not sequestered at a study group, oblivious. Omi, small and trim and competent, carrying with him the belief (and it was infectious and, in their line of work, essential) that whatever their situation was, it could be handled and there was a way out. The solution would be there, it was simply a matter of knowing where to look – but there was something steel-cold and unyielding about Omi's intellect, his ability to pare life down to the bare minimum. Like it or not Omi saw clearly. Something in the child's eyes murmured that he was far older than seventeen, and not to be underestimated.

All wrong for the situation. Look beyond the boy's wide blue eyes and ostensibly open countenance and there was a – call it a particularity about Omi, something all insinuation and dangerous currents and nowhere near as benign as simple concern. He was an intelligent boy, a force to be reckoned with; Youji was deeply grateful they were on the same side, but one thing Omi Tsukiyono could never be was normal. He didn't know how to be.

If Omi were here they would have been inside by now. He wouldn't have been hovering on a lip of concrete, gazing up at the lighted windows of the wrong hospital. Omi would have touched him on the shoulder, and said his name, and smiled: come on, would simply have walked in. He would have been calm and matter-of-fact and quietly furious; he would have effortlessly taken charge. He wouldn't have known what else to do, or how else he was supposed to cope…

But Youji (—or if he's dying or crippled or if I don't recognize him, I don't think I could handle that but you've got to handle it Youji, he's strong but not even he's that strong, oh God let him be all right, please say he'll be all right in the end—) Youji hesitated, because he didn't know what else to do either.

The light and the warmth, as he stepped into the reception area, hit him like a wall.

Too bright in there, and too loud, though the lobby was largely empty at this time of day – it was funny, he thought, how the foyers everywhere all looked essentially the same: it hardly mattered what the business behind them thought it was up to. A bank, an airline, an embassy, a hospital. All presenting themselves to the world in wide, bare sweeps of shining floor tiles, high ceilings, an obligatory echo and an interesting way with lights, dazzling or gloomy, take your pick. A desk with a young woman behind it: a scrubbed and smiling and standardized, assembly-line beauty so similar to every other receptionist that it left Youji wondering if, somewhere, there was a factory that churned them out like that.

"Excuse me."

The girl behind the information desk looked up, gave him a smile that seemed entirely genuine: Youji caught a brief flash of too-white teeth as she dimpled charmingly, but the why of it didn't really register. Here and now this girl simply didn't exist to him, except as a means to an end.

"Can I help at all, sir?"
"Yes. I," Youji said, and somehow the words seemed to catch at him, "need to find the emergency department."
The girl blinked. (But you don't look sick.) "If you're feeling unwell," she said, gesturing vaguely to something behind her, "the walk-in clinic is on your right – it's past the escalators, you won't be able to see it from here."
"It's not me. It's my—" And Youji didn't have a story for these people. He hadn't known what he was going to say before he said it, but the lie sprung to his lips so instinctively he might have had it planned long ago: "—cousin. I just got a phone call, the nurse said they'd brought in someone who could be him, but they're not sure. They asked if I'd come down to – well, to check, I guess."
"Oh, I see." She didn't sound like she saw. "Did you get the name? The name of the person who called you, I mean."
"Mori," Youji said. "Madoka Mori. She said she was a senior staff nurse."
He watched as the girl's smile changed, and active concern flooded into her warm brown eyes. She was older than him, just slightly. I'm new at this, her demeanor whispered, and sometimes I'm not sure I like it. "Oh yes, I know the woman you mean. The emergency care center's right next to the walk-in clinic. When you get there, ask to speak to the nurse in charge. He'll take you to Nurse Mori. I'll give you a temporary pass…" Already she was reaching for a pen, bowing her head. "Can I take your name?"

As he walked away he could feel the girl's eyes on his back, watching him until he slipped from view. Ordinarily he would have known why, but the way things were Youji couldn't imagine what a pretty young woman could ever have seen in him. Not here. Not now. He couldn't even manage to smile for her.

It shouldn't have mattered this much. It was Ken. Only Ken, and he'd been hurt before.

(But this was too strange and too sudden to handle. It was just an afternoon off. He was supposed to be safe, dammit!)

Nobody looked at Youji as he stepped cautiously into the walk-in clinic, finding himself in a large, over-lit waiting area discreetly cluttered with people. Too bright in here, again: the light so harsh it left the knots of people looking washed out, bleached as the figures in an over-exposed photograph. The clinic doors hissed closed behind him.

Youji knew there was no point looking, but looked anyway: extras, just extras. A plump, plain-faced woman, panic bubbling up around the edges of a superficial calm, with a dazed and yawning toddler in flimsy cotton pajamas held upon her lap. A student pacing, pausing, pacing again. Three stained and dusty men, laborers most likely – one mournfully cradling his arm, another pressing a handful of tissues to a bleeding nose. A scattering of salarymen in suits. A brace of girls dressed too gaudily for their clinical surroundings: the prettier of the two pressed a tissue to panda eyes while her friend shifted uneasily beside her. An elderly couple, their hair shot through with gray, side by side on one of the upholstered benches, unspeaking: the wife occasionally pressed her husband's hand. Neither of them, to Youji's eyes, looked particularly ill.

It would have been nice to see Ken there, perhaps pressing a piece of gauze to a gash on his brow, frowning and irritated and resenting the fuss that was being made over a single stupid scratch—

Another desk, another girl, yawning and picking at her fingernails with an unbent paperclip. Rika, said her nametag.

"I'm looking for a woman called Madoka Mori."
The answer was pat, uninterested. "She's on duty until nine. If you've come to see her, I'll have to ask you to wait elsewhere."
"No, that's not it," Youji said. "You see, my cousin…"
"I'm sorry," Receptionist Rika said briskly, eagerly snatching hold of the wrong end of the stick and proceeding to beat herself to death with it, "I can't allow you to jump the queue just because you know Nurse Mori. There's a lot of other people here already. I can take your cousin's details, but he'll have to wait to be seen like everyone else. Of course the waiting time will depend on his condition and I should warn you they're very busy over in Majors, which has to take priority."
"Yes, they think that's where he is." Said aloud, it sounded horribly final. "Can you contact Nurse Mori? I'd like to see him."
The girl frowned at him. "But we don't allow visitors in the emergency center. Once he's admitted to a ward you can—"
"No, look. It's very simple. I—" Youji broke off, all patience vanishing, "Can I speak to the nurse in charge please."

He could tell the girl didn't want to do it. She'd taken against him on sight: by the look on her face she had realized he wasn't impressed by her desk or her name badge, and had worked himself up to just the right degree of outraged anxiety to become a persistent problem. Fine then – she was reaching for the telephone, disapproval showing in the set of her shoulders – you can talk to the charge nurse. At least you'll be off my hands.

"Wait over there, please," The girl said, gesturing sulkily to the body of the room as she put down the phone. Clearly the call hadn't gone to her liking. Probably for the best. "He'll be sending through for you."

Senior Staff Nurse Madoka Mori turned out to be a neat and compact woman with a calm, reassuring demeanor. Though her dark eyes were weary, she was still disarmingly handsome. Just to gaze at her left Youji painfully aware of how bedraggled he must have been looking. She bowed, smiled at him, offered an apology for the delay he hadn't really noticed (something about a doctor) and said something rote and reassuring: caught off-guard by the bustle and the clamor all about him, Youji didn't really catch any of it. He said, can I see him?

Nurse Mori nodded, of course, but she didn't take him there straight away. First she led him from the cluttered nurse's station and down a cramped, cubicle-lined corridor just wide enough to accommodate a gurney. She led him into an empty cubicle, stepping aside to allow him to pass by then, drawing the curtains, invited him to take a seat. Youji stood.

"Just how bad is it?" he asked.
Nurse Mori looked away, eyes downcast. "His condition remains stable but you should be aware," she said, "that your—"
"Cousin."
"Your cousin, thank you. Should this patient turn out to be your cousin," Ken, Youji thought, his name is Ken, "please be aware that, though he can at times appear conscious, he may not respond to you. His condition is rather…" She hesitated, just slightly – she had dropped the thread of the conversation, and fumbled to pick it up again. She'd seen this before, but not often, not often enough to get used to it. She shifted her weight as he watched: not, he could tell, in embarrassment, but as if her feet were sore. "Particular."
"Particular," Youji echoed, as if the word meant nothing. "What do you mean by that?"
"I'm afraid I can't explain further. We have to maintain confidentiality, and we've yet to confirm his identity. All I can tell you is there are strong grounds to believe the patient in question was the victim of a serious criminal assault."

Criminal assault. The woman was blushing. Down the corridor something started chiming, soft and insistent. There's a boy here who's been raped, and they think it's Ken—

Ridiculous.

Nurse Mori said, "I'm terribly sorry, sir." And God help the both of them, she actually sounded it. "But it would have been remiss of me not to tell you first."
"No," Youji said: it was an effort to fight back a laugh. This was ridiculous, this couldn't be Ken. Eight forty and Ken would be back home now, boiling the kettle in the kitchen, complaining to anyone who'd put up a pretense of listening about the driving rain and slick, treacherous roads, wondering where in the Hell he'd gotten to: anyone could get a store receipt and they called Ken average for a reason. "I understand. Can I see him?"

The nurse stepped back, drew aside the cubicle curtain. It was, Youji supposed, as good a response as any. Strange, that small courtesy, the way she had stepped aside to allow him to leave first, when he would need her to lead the way to—

No, it was absurd. This couldn't be him, it didn't make sense that it would be. It couldn't be possible. Sure Ken didn't look like much, but he was good at what he did: even if Youji could imagine anyone other than an armed professional taking Ken down, which he couldn't really, this was – no, it was a typo, a category error. It simply wasn't reasonable. There had to be another explanation, an innocent one. The weather. The roads. Ken?

(Has your friend ever called himself Siberian?)

He stopped short. Nurse Mori was hesitating beside the closed curtain of one of the cubicles: it was the final bizarre touch to a situation he could barely believe in as it was. And now, tonight's mystery guest—he laughed, and it sounded strange and strained and somehow wrong, and all Nurse Mori did was watch him. Not judging, not blaming – she wasn't even surprised.

All she said was, "This is the patient."

Youji (and, on cold reflection, he could hardly explain even to himself why he had expected it) imagined she would pull the curtain aside, but she didn't. Nurse Mori simply parted it slightly and held it open, just a little, in a silent invitation to step inside: he could see nothing, only a slice of bare, white-painted wall and a storage unit made of strong clear plastic, drawers full to bursting, and a scrap of white material (a square of gauze? A disposable washcloth?) on the scuffed, dully shining floor. Okay, Kudou, ready or not…

"You want me to go in?" Youji asked, half-hoping she would tell him no.
"If you don't mind."

Ready or not. Youji smiled, as if to show it didn't really matter: Nurse Mori smiled back, helplessly, because she knew it did.

And it felt like looking at a stranger, anyway.

Broken and distant and somehow diminished – too young and too small and too pale to be anybody Youji should have been able to recognize. He looked like an afterthought, lost amongst heavy blankets and overstarched sheets, and pillows, and a clutter of medical paraphernalia, IVs and monitoring equipment, and an oxygen mask: the hospital gown they had dressed him in looked far too large for him and only diminished him further. Somehow, his injuries (the split skin of his cheek held together with paper stitches; one arm stiff in a heavy cast, the other pierced at the wrist by an IV, its tubing snaking pale and grotesque across the covers) only looked all the more ghastly for the half-hearted attempts to patch them up. Even breathing seemed to tear at him and how long is it, Youji wondered, since I last saw him?

A languid, heat-hazy afternoon with the air still and heavy, thick with the promise of thunder and just so you know, Ken said, snatching the delivery receipt from between Aya's poised fingers and stuffing it into the pocket of his apron, you owe me for this, Fujimiya. And he'd hefted the crate of flowers and (don't expect me back) slipped from their reach, pausing in the shop doorway to settle the crate more comfortably against his hip, smiling back at them and raising one hand in silent farewell. He said simply, later, and walked away into—

"It's him," Youji said.

Nurse Mori suggested he sit down again and this time he did, slumping heavily into a hard, straight-backed chair left by the bedside, a relic of the doctor's visit.

"You can touch him," she said, "if you like. Holding his hand won't do him any harm."
Youji swallowed. Tried to make himself look away, look up at the woman – he couldn't. He said, "Do you think he'd like that?"
"I'm sure," Nurse Mori said again, "it won't do him any harm."

And just to touch seemed like an imposition. Gently, cautiously, Youji reached for Ken and, though it was wrong, all wrong that it should have been so, it was no surprise at all Ken's skin felt cold. Youji sighed and – oh, Kenken, what am I going to do about you? – rubbed his hand, trying to coax the warmth back into it: Ken's fingers tightened around his own, clasping his hand almost hard enough to hurt. Youji flinched slightly, lips parting as if to frame a question, only to catch himself. Though his grasp was taut and urgent, Ken lay still, perfectly silent – yet wary and watchful and far more there than Youji would ever had realized, had he not chosen to let him in on it…

"What's his name?" the woman asked delicately after a time Youji never counted had passed in silence, punctuated by the sound of hurrying feet, a bubble of clipped and urgent conversation: totally shut down, unresponsive to filling – query general sepsis— The curtain rippled and swayed in their wake.
Youji started, raising his head, furtive and guilty as a boy caught daydreaming in class. "What?"
"Your cousin's name," Nurse Mori said again. Softly, and gently as if he were the wounded one. "You understand that we're going to have to admit him."
"Kensuke." Youji spoke numbly. "He's called Kensuke." Kensuke, he thought, who the Hell is that?

You've got to stop him giving his name, Aya had said before he left. But how would he know to respond to anything else?

My name is Siberian—God knew where Ken had thought he was and this woman hadn't even questioned it. Probably heard stranger things from patients drugged into stupor or half out of their minds from pain. Perhaps it had been a blessing Ken had given his codename. At least that meant nothing unless one knew what it meant already, it could be explained away only too easily. He was overmedicated, or delirious, or maybe just young. Better that than the name of a dead man.

"Kensuke," Nurse Mori said: there was relief in her voice as she reached for a ballpoint. "And the family name?"
"Hidaka." It was taking a chance and he knew it, but Ken had enough to worry about without keeping an alias straight. Bear with me on this one, Ken. "He's nineteen."
"And his parents? Do you have their address?"
"Dead. House fire." Oh, of course, the woman's eyes said, the scars: exactly why Youji had said it. "We took him in, but my parents went up north… mother's not well, she can't travel, and this—" He broke off. "I don't want to worry her."
Nurse Mori nodded. "Well," she said reassuringly, "for practical purposes we can say you're the next of kin. I would suggest you inform them, you don't have to say why Hidaka-san is in hospital, but – anyway, I'll need some details."

And did it matter, when the hospital would be happy with anything as long as it looked plausible on paper, if she had the right ones or not?

So Youji smiled, because if he didn't smile he didn't know what he might do, and talked to Madoka Mori of a boy who had never existed, the better to conceal the identity of a boy who shouldn't have existed any more. Watched her nodding in all the right places, trusting him to tell the truth because she couldn't imagine why he would do otherwise, watched the furrow of her brow and the set of her lips, and the nib of her ballpoint as it darted across the pages.

Forgotten, Ken slipped into sleep.

-to be continued-