evandar

Title: Frankenstein's Winter
Author: Evandar (yamievandar / hikarievandar)
Fandom: Category: Freaks
Pairing: Asagi/Amano
Rating: T
Summary: When they are invited onto a Police investigation team, Amano knows that something is very, very wrong.
Disclaimer: Category: Freaks is the property of Gokurakuin Sakurako; Frankenstein belongs to Mary Shelley, and I am making absolutely no money by distributing this story.

I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is true.

The sky was pearl white and heavy, promising snow later in the day. The weather in general was bitter, and Amano had wrapped himself up as warmly as he could in scarves and gloves and a thick jumper under his coat, all of which he snuggled into as he walked from the underground station to work. The people around him moved quickly, their heads bowed, trying as hard as they could to get to the warm indoors as fast as they could.

He arrived about fifteen minutes before he was expected, which earned him a look over the top of Asagi’s paper as he peeled off his wet garments…or at least he hoped that was what earned him the look – piercing and questioning and, just like the rest of Asagi, worryingly attractive. He wasn’t about to tell the Stand that he had left early to escape his hyperactive younger siblings, who were sure it was going to snow today. Fortunately Asagi chose not to question him, and instead turned back to his paper.

So all in all, it started out as a regular morning in the office of Nanami Paranormal Investigation Service. Asagi sat reading and chain smoking at his desk, Amano reading a paperback he’d brought from home – they hadn’t had many missions that month so there was no paperwork for him to shuffle – Mahime was off somewhere bathing Tokiko, and Izumi was probably asleep.

Amano should have realised he was being lulled into a false sense of security: nothing ever, ever stayed quiet around the office for long.

When the bell rang and Asagi shot him a look to tell him to open the door – he was already on his way by the time Asagi lowered the paper enough to reveal his eyes – the first sign that something was out of the ordinary was the Police badge that was shoved under his nose as soon as he opened the door.

“Um…can I help you, officers?” Amano asked, shifting his gaze from the shiny, well cared for badge to look at the person holding it.

The man was middle aged and fairly trim, as far as Amano could tell. He was dressed in a long grey trench coat and a stripy purple scarf was tied around his neck, partially obscuring his chin. His partner was younger, with a ponytail curled on his own scarf and shoulder.

“We’re here to see Asagi Nanami,” the older officer said. His voice was deep, but scratchy as if he had smoked far too many cigarettes in his life time. “Are you him?”

“Um…no,” Amano said, now very aware that these people had definitely not met Asagi before, and he couldn’t help but wonder why they would want to meet Asagi. “Please, come in.”

He could feel their gazes burning into his back as he led them down the corridor to Asagi’s office once he had hung up their overcoats. It was irritating, but he held his tongue. His mind was going a mile a minute. What on earth had Asagi done that warranted a visit from the Police? Hadn’t Asagi been a Police officer at one point?

Asagi, however, did not look surprised by their arrival in the slightest. He stared at them and their ID for a few moments over the top of his newspaper, before lowering it and placing it, neatly folded, onto his desk. He leaned forward, fixing them both with an intent stare.

“Can I help?” he asked.

The case was one of the stranger ones that Amano had ever heard of. Murder victims had been found with different parts of their bodies missing. The Police profilers hadn’t seen anything like it before, and it had taken a sixth murder for them to realise that the parts that were being taken, when combined, would build a new body.

It had been a rookie cop, whose name Asagi seemed to recognise, who had suggested that they consult him. Amano wasn’t sure <i>why</i> exactly – it just sounded like a pretty weird murder case to him; nothing to do with their usual area – but Asagi seemed…interested. Well, as interested as Asagi could seem when he was deliberately keeping his features blank.

The younger of the detectives – DI Kuroshi – looked slightly uncomfortable, as if he didn’t want to be in the same building as Asagi. Amano could sympathise: Asagi had a definitely creepy vibe that could make fight or flight instincts kick in, and it took a while to get used to it.

Oddly, when Asagi had masqueraded as a girl for the Kiriko case when they had first met, Amano hadn’t noticed. It was almost as if Asagi had been deliberately toning it down…

The other detective, however, looked less than impressed with the Stand. He was staring at Asagi as if he couldn’t quite believe he was real. Again, Amano could see why: as strange-looking as Asagi was, he did not look old enough to run a company.

He also appeared to be more than sceptical about their line of work. That made Amano wonder what on earth could get such a blatant sceptic – and a detective to boot – to seek the help of a Paranormal Investigator. There was clearly something going on, something wrong with the case, that they weren’t being told about.

It worried him.

Once the detectives were gone – Asagi had shown them out himself – Asagi paused by Amano’s desk. He leaned his hip against the polished wood and looked down at Amano, almost as if he wasn’t really seeing him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Asagi blinked and nodded slowly. “Don’t do anything stupid, Amano,” he murmured.

Unsure of what to say, and with no clue as to why Asagi was telling him this, Amano nodded. For one insane, wild moment, he wondered if it was because Asagi might actually care for him…but that question brought up too many other questions to which he did not want to know the answers. His nod must have been enough, however, because the strange look in Asagi’s eyes vanished and he returned quickly to his desk. Amano glanced back down at his book and frowned at it: he had lost all desire to read.

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.

The Police department Amano found himself in two days later was plain and boring and smelled heavily of coffee. He was sitting at a long wooden table next to Asagi, with DI Kuroshi on his other side, a plastic cup filled with steaming hot coffee from the machine down the hall, and a manila folder in front of him. Some – no, most – of the officers and detectives who had joined them did not seem pleased with their involvement at all. They were civilians, and were not supposed to get involved with detective work, and Amano had a sneaking suspicion that they thought he and Asagi were little more than frauds.

As Asagi had once said “ignorance is bliss”. The detectives were probably far better off believing that they were frauds rather than finding out what kind of things that they dealt with on a regular basis.

But then, if they had been brought on to this case, then there was a chance that they would come into contact with…whatever it was that had been cause enough for paranormal investigators to be dragged into the equation.

“What is our real purpose here?” Asagi spoke up from his place next to Amano as he flicked through his own folder. Glancing at it, Amano saw photographs of the victims, and a wave of nausea washed over him. They had been butchered, and the photographs of their bodies showed that they were almost artistically splashed with vibrant red gore.

“It seems to me that all you are dealing with is a serial killer,” he continued, tilting his head slightly to study one image better, an expression of near child-like curiosity on his face. “Not something that is…within our jurisdiction.”

“What is within your jurisdiction, exactly?” a new detective asked. He was one of the many who wasn’t trying to hide his resentment at their presence; looking at them with disdain. To him, Amano realised, they must seem like a couple of kids playing around with the grownups. He wasn’t to know that Asagi was really the oldest person in the room…

“We’re exorcists,” Asagi told him, lifting his blood red eyes from the contents of his folder. “We deal exclusively with the dead, the cursed, and things that humanity can’t understand. Serial killers don’t fall into any of those categories.”

The detective was about to respond when the older of the two detectives who had contacted them in the first place – DI Togawari – cleared his throat and silenced him with a frown.

“Nanami-san,” he said. “Have you ever heard the story of Frankenstein and his monster?”

“The tale by Mary Shelley,” Asagi murmured, and for a brief moment he almost looked nostalgic. “I know it. You think the killer is trying to imitate Doctor Frankenstein and create life using the bodies of the dead?”

Amano couldn’t help the look of disgust that twisted his features. He was not, however, the only one to look affected by Asagi’s bland statement: several of the detectives flinched, and one of the rookies turned a delicate shade of green.

“It’s a possibility,” Detective Togawari confirmed. “What I want to know is: is there any way it could work?”

“Sir!” Kuroshi cried out.

“We need to know,” the older detective growled, silencing his protests.

Asagi was silent for a moment. “You need to understand, detective, that Shelley greatly romanticised her tale. The…monster in her tale was capable of thought and intelligence and speech and even love, but it was the disgust of its creator that led it to commit its crimes. Real life is never so idealistic. Are you sure you want to know, detective?”

Togawari nodded. “I don’t scare easy, kid,” he said.

Asagi smirked at him. “If your killer is doing this, and if he manages to perform the right rituals in the right way then yes, it is possible. However, the creature will be nothing like Shelley’s imagining. It will be a base creature, incapable of intelligent thought and affection. It will awaken hungry, and it will remain so, and its only desire will be to sate that hunger.”

“On what?” Amano didn’t see or care who had asked that question, as his eyes were fixed on Asagi’s face, and the unnameable expression in his eyes.

“Human flesh,” Asagi said. “So if that is your killer’s goal, and he achieves it, it is highly unlikely that you will find him alive.”

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

“Naoki-nii-san!”

Amano turned at the bottom of the path that led to his home. His younger sister stood on the porch steps, holding his scarf in her hands. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and she was shivering in the cold.

“Sakiko…” he sighed. “What are you doing?”

“You forgot your scarf,” she told him, with the kind of authority only a twelve-year-old can muster. “You need to wrap up warm; it’s cold.”

He smiled at her and trudged back up the path to take it from her hands. “Thanks Saki-chan,” he said. “Now you go back indoors before you get cold.”

She looked up at him. “Why are you going out so late Nii-san?”

“I’m needed at work,” he replied.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “You and mother and father never tell me anything about what you do,” she groused. “Why does your boss need you so late?”

He winced. His father didn’t really care what his job was unless it affected his studies, but his step-mother had freaked out as soon as she had discovered what it was that he did. She had made both him and his father swear not to tell her children anything about Amano’s work, frightened in case her children turned into “ghouls” just like their older half-brother.

“I forgot to handle some paperwork,” he lied. “It’s nothing exciting, Saki, but I need to go in and finish things.”

She sighed. “Okay…” She turned to go back in, but paused in the doorway. “Hey, Nii-san? You will tell me one day, won’t you?”

“Sure Saki,” he promised his throat dry. “I will.”

She closed the door behind her, and Amano sagged. He hated lying to her.

“Are you coming or what?”

Amano jumped and spun around. There, standing at the front gate, was Asagi. The only sign that he was reacting at all to the cold was the long trench coat he had slung over his shoulders, though it wasn’t even fastened. His hair was glowing gold under the yellow light of the street lamp, and his eyes shone like rubies. He looked beautiful and dangerous at the same time, and the sight of him made Amano feel oddly nervous.

He swallowed round the sudden tightness in his throat. “Yeah,” he managed. “I’m coming.”

Wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!

The Police had tracked their murderer down to a large house on the outskirts of the city. It had a neatly kept garden, and swept steps leading up to a large wooden porch. The only wild part of the building – the only part that didn’t really fit – was a large tree next to the house. It was tall with bare, twisted branches and the headlights from the Police cars and the light from the streetlamp on the corner threw its shape into sharp relief on the white-washed walls of the building.

It was a remarkably neat house for a killer, Amano thought, but then, he supposed that even serial killers had to blend in with the rest of society somehow.

At his side, Asagi stood straight-backed and alert, his head tilted slightly back. An expression of disgust flickered over his face before it was replaced by his usual haughty countenance.

“It worked,” he said coolly. “Someone actually managed to do it. I can smell the blood from here…”

“What, exactly, did they do?” Amano asked. “I mean, you never explained how someone could reanimate pieces of corpses.”

“They summon a Freak and get it to take to the body,” Asagi told him. “It’s more difficult than it sounds: you have to have built the ‘body’ from fresh parts, you build it correctly, and you have to summon the right kind of Freak. It’s…exact.”

Amano grimaced. “Someone put a lot of effort into this,” he murmured. “Why? If the creature would just kill them, why do it?”

“Humans are arrogant,” Asagi replied. A gust of frozen wind blew strands of his snowy hair over his face, and made his coat flap dramatically around his thin frame. “They never think that the monsters will get them; they think that they are eternal. It’s a species flaw.”

“Um…” Amano wanted to argue, he really did, but unfortunately even he could see that Asagi’s blunt statement was true.

A second gust of wind brought the first flake of the snow the sky had been promising for the past two days. It was large and heavy and wet, and it was soon followed by a flurry of snowflakes that swirled around the two of them. Asagi looked across at him, feeling Amano’s stare lingering on his face, and he smiled slowly, tilting his head flirtatiously to the side. A blush sprung up over Amano’s cheeks, but he found himself unable to look away Asagi’s eyes were glowing slightly in the half-light, granting him perfect vision in the gloom.

‘Beautiful,’ Amano thought, ‘but he isn’t human… He’s a monster, just like the thing in that building.’

“Nanami, Amano,” they were interrupted by Detective Kuroshi. He looked cold, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his neck and lower face obscured by a thick woollen scarf, but his eyes travelled curiously between them. “We’re heading in.”

“I’m going with you,” Asagi told him. “Your killer is already dead.”

“How do you…”

Asagi glared at him, and his question was never finished. Amano realised that the detective had been forced to feel the brunt of one of Asagi’s near-lethal glares, and with the glowing eyes…he knew from experience just how threatening that could look.

“I’ll be going as well,” he piped up, drawing their attentions to him.

Asagi raised an eyebrow. “You will?” he asked.

“Someone has to cover you while you…er…exorcise it,” he said.

“Of course.”

I pursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul.

The house was dark, the only light coming from the constantly moving beams of the Police officers’ torches. Once inside, Amano was finally treated to the scent Asagi had picked up earlier. The heavy, metallic scent of blood hung in the air, tainting every breath. As they walked further, their footsteps sounding unnaturally loud, another stench hit them and Amano gagged. It smelled like a public toilet and that, mixed with the blood, was nearly unbearable.

Amano wondered how Asagi, with his super-strength sense of smell, could deal with it. The Stand didn’t seem affected by it in the slightest. He did pause, however, and give Amano a concerned look – something Amano was not used to seeing from his boss – while he waited for Amano to adjust to the fetid air. It took a while: the smell was terrible and hard to ignore, and Amano felt the urge to throw up rise within him when he remembered what exactly he was smelling – the murderer, the creature’s victim had been torn apart.

After a moment they continued. Asagi moved like a ghost through the barely lit halls and rooms, following the scent of the Freak and its body. Next to him, Amano felt weak and awkward and loud and all too aware of his own humanity. The detectives and Police officers shadowing them were even louder by comparison – the lights from their torches shining into every nook and crevice - and Amano felt that it was a wonder that the Freak hadn’t found them yet.

As usual, his thoughts came too quickly. Asagi stopped in his tracks suddenly. He inhaled sharply and glanced slightly to his left, and Amano followed his gaze to a shadowed corner. He saw nothing at first; heard nothing except the harsh panting of his own breath. Then one of the Police officers shone his torch into the darkness, revealing the monster.

It looked little like a human, despite what it was made from. Its body was twisted and crouched, and the wet-looking skin gleamed an ugly shade of translucent yellow in the torchlight. Its blue-tinted lips stretched unnaturally wide as it hissed something incoherent at them, revealing broken blood-stained teeth. Long hair fell around its upper body, thick and matted with blood, and drops fell from the tips as it shifted, its bloodshot soulless eyes fixed on Asagi as if it could sense that he was a threat.

“Oh my god,” Kuroshi muttered in disgust, lifting a hand to hold it over his mouth.

It was as if his words had broken a spell. The creature turned its eyes to him, startled by the sudden noise, and lunged. It moved surprisingly quickly for something with mismatched limbs. Guns fired as the Police officers reacted, but the bullets only made it stagger slightly. There was no blood, Amano noticed – feeling as though he was far away from the scene in front of him – as though the creature had none in it at all. It shrieked wordlessly in anger; continuing in its path towards the young detective.

It was Asagi who stopped it, moving faster than Amano could see. The creature slammed into Asagi’s side – or nearly did, as just at the last second long, knife-like limbs sliced through the air and impaled it. The world seemed to freeze as the Police watched the creature struggle against Asagi, horror in their eyes.

Asagi ended it. Cold, congealed blood burst from the creature’s patch work body as Asagi tore it apart in one, swift movement. It sprayed over them, spattering them with rancid gore, and that proved too much.

From the corner of his eye, Amano saw one of the officers – Detective Togawari, in fact – raise his gun once more, this time aiming for Asagi. His heart gave a strange jolt in his chest, and before he realised it, he was moving, running towards Asagi faster than he had ever run before.

Something slammed into him, white-hot agony exploded in his shoulder and his world went black.

"Soon I shall die and what I feel now will no longer be felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.”

The first thing Amano became aware of when he came round was a throbbing pain in his right shoulder. He groaned in protest, and shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position but failing miserably.

“You shouldn’t try to move,” a familiar voice pointed out, rather needlessly in Amano’s opinion.

Amano cracked his eyes open. He blinked a couple of times as bright light assaulted his vision and the room slowly came into the usual blurry focus that accompanied the loss of his glasses. He was not, however, too blinded not to notice the familiar white hair and black suit of his boss.

“Asagi?” he croaked out. “What are you…where am I?”

“You’re in hospital,” Asagi said. He sounded like he couldn’t decide whether to be angry or amused and the war between the two emotions made him sound much more like a normal person.

He leaned over Amano’s bed, something in his hand, and it was only when he felt long fingers brush his ears and saw the world come into sharp focus that Amano realised that Asagi had returned his glasses.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Asagi raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the one lying in a hospital bed,” he pointed out.

Amano couldn’t stop the blush that spread across his cheeks. “Do my parents know I’m here?” he asked.

Asagi nodded. “I called them once you’d gone into theatre,” he said. “Your step-mother is not particularly happy with you. Or me.”

Amano shifted uncomfortably under Asagi’s penetrating gaze. “She thinks what we do is “ghoulish”,” he admitted.

Asagi smirked down at him. “She has no idea…”

A cough from the doorway interrupted them. It was Amano’s parents, with Sakiko and their other daughter Umiko. Sakiko was staring as Asagi with outright curiosity, while Umiko was hiding half behind her mother’s leg – too shy around strangers to even stare at Asagi’s strange appearance.

“Naoki-kun, you’re awake,” his step-mother said quietly, her voice slightly cool as though she thought he deserved his pain. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” Amano lied. His shoulder hurt like Hell, but he didn’t want to say so in front of Asagi and his family. He cringed slightly when he saw Asagi roll his eyes.

“Who’s your friend, Naoki-nii-san?” Sakiko asked.

“Um, this is Asagi,” he said. “He’s my boss.”

Sakiko frowned. “You’d better let my brother have some time off,” she told Asagi sternly, and Amano briefly wondered if the ground would swallow him up if he asked nicely. Asagi was never going to let him forget this.

“I will,” Asagi promised. Even as he did so, his eyes travelled to Amano, and his polite smile turned wicked, sending a shiver up Amano’s spine. He had been right: Asagi would remind him of this moment until his dying day.

Just…great. He’d taken a bullet for the guy and all he’d get in return was a step up in the relentless teasing.

Speaking of which, “um…after I passed out…” he started. His step-mother shot him a warning glare.

“I dealt with them,” Asagi told him. He smiled sardonically at the expression on Amano’s face. “I didn’t do anything too drastic.”

Amano could think of several things that Asagi’s definition of “too drastic” probably didn’t cover and didn’t like any of them. But Asagi was here; he hadn’t been arrested – or maybe he had, and didn’t want to say that much in front of…no. It was Asagi: he probably couldn’t care less about their audience – and he wasn’t showing any signs of injury.

“Good,” Amano said after a while.

The silence coming from his family was hostile in its intensity, and apparently Asagi had noticed, because he stood, taking his suit jacket from the back of the chair. He paused to lean over Amano again before he left; only this time he brushed his lips gently against Amano’s.

“Don’t push yourself too hard, Naoki,” he murmured, just loud enough for the rest of the room to hear. He pulled away; surveyed Amano’s stunned face with a somewhat satisfied air, and left.

When Amano regained his powers of thought – his brain having gone on holiday the moment Asagi’s mouth had touched his own – he realised that his family’s silence had become awkward in an entirely different way, and that all of them – even Umiko – were staring at him.

‘That bastard,’ he thought. ‘I’m going to kill him.’

The tingling sensation on his lips, his fluttering heartbeat and the pain in his wounded shoulder begged to differ.