A/N: Hello, and welcome to where the actual story starts. I really appreciate the reviews so far, and of course I would continue to appreciate it if I got even more :) I know this is a depressing story; the death of a loved one is never easy. I wanted to see how the boys would cope with something like this. Another more personal reason for writing this story is that I just lost my grandmother last week. A lot of what they're feeling is what I've been feeling for awhile, so it's a little painful and surprisingly therapeutic to write this. This is really going to deal with that first awful week after someone has died. So, on with the chapter.

Such the Angels Go

Chapter 1: I Wasn't Prepared

The sun was in its last stages of setting, below the horizon yet leaving a residue of red, pinks and blues behind. The fading light was offset by the bright headlights of the many cars traveling along the roads of Tokyo, along with the lights from the city buildings and apartments that stretched up to meet the dying fire in the sky.
A car cut through the evening traffic effortlessly. The driver was at his wits end, but somehow, he managed to smoothly avoid any collisions with cars in the other lanes as he weaved around them to get ahead. He was only doing forty-five, but the traffic on this particular road was heavy, and it was either slow down at some point or run right into the back of that Pontiac in front of him.
Every time he had to slow down, though, his heart leapt in his throat. His mind was one track - he had to get there in time, he had to get there now. Dammit, why couldn't these people move faster? Why was it that everything and everyone seemed to slow down when you were in a hurry? He slammed on the brakes again and bared his teeth. What was wrong with these people!
"Come on," he pleaded, and his eyes darted to the digital clock. The thought of not making it sent slick panic and horror up his spine, scurrying along up to his brain and then down to his heart. His hands were gripping the wheel so tightly the knuckles were white, and he breathed carefully and controlled through his nose to keep a measure of calm so he didn't wreck his car and end his own life before he got to the hospital.
When he finally saw the sign for University of Tokyo Hospital, his relief was so great tears pricked his eyes. Thank God. The entrance to the parking lot came up immediately on his right, and in a quick decision he jerked the wheel to the right and cut in front of two cars so he wouldn't miss the entrance. They blared their horns as he pulled up and into the parking lot, but at the moment he could care less.
He drove the car past the ER entrance of the hospital where an ambulance, red and blue lights still flashing, sat in front of the automatic doors as a patient was loaded out the back and brought in. He parked in the first available spot, not giving a second thought to the fact that it was reserved for some doctor and he would be fined if he parked there. He was out of the car a second later, and the tall young man ran to the entrance of the ER, the end of his button down shirt flapping behind him.
The air outside had been warm, slightly muggy, but the air inside the ER bordered on downright cold. Slightly disoriented by the sudden change in temperature, he stopped when he was just inside, briefly at a loss amongst the stretchers, medical personnel, and civilians either sick or relatives of the sick. The smell of antiseptic hung heavy on the air and made his stomach churn. He spotted the front desk and jogged quickly over to it.
The nurse behind the desk looked up as a winded, distraught young man came up and rested the heel of his hands on the edge of the desk. "Are you here to see someone?"
No, I'm here because I get so much pleasure out of coming to ER, he wanted to snarl sarcastically, but kept his inner thoughts to himself.
"My . . . my mother was brought in here, ah, yesterday aft- um, evening," he corrected himself. He gave his mother's name, and then paused briefly to recall the name of the doctor. "A Dr. Tuchiya called me -"
"Ah, yes," the nurse interrupted when she realized what patient this concerned. Suddenly sympathetic, the woman eyed the young man for a moment before checking her most recent files. "Room 137. It's in the hallway behind this desk, down a ways to your left."
He barely managed to get out a 'thanks' before he took off for that hallway. He speed walked down the wide, tiled walkway, past doctors, nurses, and hospital beds containing patients of all ages, keeping an eye on the numbers to the sides of the doors as he went. When he finally reached number one hundred and thirty-seven, he came a few inches within running into the startled doctor that just opened the door to the room and stepped out.
"Dr. Tuchiya, my -"
"Your mother," he finished gently. The older man's dark eyes pinned his own lighter ones, and he hesitated for a brief second.
He didn't have to say it. He caught a brief glimpse of the inside of the room. The thin, frail form in the bed, the two nurses inside. One of them looked up and caught his gaze with dark, regretful eyes. A constant, small sound filled the background.
The doctor's eyes were filled with sadness.
"I'm sorry," he finally said. "We simply couldn't revive her after the last attack. I am truly sorry."
He felt his knees want to buckle, and he moved to lean against the wall to keep his balance. There was a roaring in his ears, so loud that he couldn't hear anything else.
It had been quick. That was what the doctor had told him. Quick, and after the first one, she didn't feel much pain.
It didn't make him feel any better.
He knew they'd meant it to be comforting. As if it would be easier to swallow knowing that she hadn't felt much pain in the end.
He'd made it to the hospital, but he'd been too late. In the end, he was much too late. It hurt almost as much as her death itself. The doctor tried to assure him that even if he had arrived yesterday, it wouldn't have mattered - the heart attack and the damage from the accident had left her unconscious, almost in a coma-like state. He wouldn't have been able to talk to her even if he wanted to. Once the other two heart attacks hit, one at midnight and another an hour before he arrived, she couldn't hold on any longer.
He sat, leaned over in a hard chair in the ER, completely unaware of the bustle and noises going on around him. A woman with her baby sat a few seats away, nearly hysterical because her baby had fallen and hit her head. She was arguing with a nurse about seeing a doctor now, her baby needed attention now. Why did she have to wait?
An old man sat across from him, holding a hand to his own head, talking to himself loudly in a foreign language. A younger male leaned over to tell him to shut up, his friend next to him hunched over and clutching his leg. The smell of antiseptic still permeated the air, although it was slightly overridden by a heavy perfume coming from a large woman not too far away, fanning herself and asking every two minutes when she could see a doctor about these terrible stomach pains.
He didn't see or hear any of it. His vision was fixed on a spot on the floor, his hands lying useless in his lap. There was a constant, terrible pressure on his chest, and it was so heavy. He would have done anything to make that weight go away, but it seemed persistent on staying.
He hardly listened when Dr. Tuchiya explained everything that had happened. He hadn't really wanted to hear it. Knowing what happened would make it all the more real. He longed to hold onto that hazy feeling of unreality that had first struck him, as if he were walking in a dream or viewing this from someone else's perspective. This wasn't happening to him, he was just watching it happen to someone else, like in a movie. But the more Dr. Tuchiya talked, the more real it became, and he wanted to hate the man for doing that. The more he spoke, the harder it was to keep a hold on that feeling of being unattached to everything.
Someone was pressing something into his hands, and it felt hot. Blinking, he looked up and at the Styrofoam cup holding a brown liquid that could only be coffee. A pale, slim hand held it, unadorned with anything but a golden band and a pretty engagement ring. He took it numbly, and then looked up further to put a face to the hand.
Shiny, long black hair fell past the shoulders of the white lab coat, and a sad, pale face looked down at his. Dr. Date kept her hand wrapped around one of his own. "Oh, honey, I am so sorry," she expressed sadly, and reached down to give him a hug which he couldn't quite return. She pulled back and smoothed back the hair from his forehead, and for a moment he just closed his eyes and let her do it.
He looks so lost and dazed, thought Mrs. Date as she eyed him sympathetically. The poor boy. She could only imagine how he must be feeling. Her own mother had died many years ago, but she could still recall the pain of it vividly. She'd been checking in on his mother from the minute she heard it was one of her sons' friend's mother, feeling it was her duty to see this through and wait for his arrival. Things took such a turn for the worse, and she felt just as helpless as he did about the outcome.
"Do you need anything, sweetheart?" she asked softly. "Would you like for me to call my son?"
For a moment, he looked as if he didn't hear her. Then, he gave an almost imperceptible nod. Before she could turn away to oblige, he reached out and put a hand on her arm. His eyes looked imploringly up into hers. "Is there . . . another phone I could use to ring someone else?"
Mrs. Date nodded, and he got up to follow her to a phone. She kept a hand on his back, and the cup of coffee he held sloshed forlornly in the cup. He didn't think he could bring himself to drink it, but the gesture wasn't lost on him. He was grateful for her presence. She had the same calming quality her son had, and he found the roaring in his ears wasn't as bad as it had been before.
She spoke with a nurse behind another desk, who lifted up a phone and placed it on the counter. Mrs. Date turned to him with, "I'm going to call him. When you've finished making your phone calls, why don't you sit back down and drink your coffee, all right? I want to see it all gone by the time I get back."
She was hoping to get some reaction out of him for the motherly rib, but all he did was set the cup down and nod, keeping his eyes trained on the phone as he picked up the receiver. He gave her a 'thank you' with a tone that told her he might not seem thankful, but he was trying. Sparing the lost young man one last sympathetic glance, Dr. Date walked down the hall towards her office.
Like second nature, he automatically dialed a number he'd dialed a hundred times before, and let it ring.
The window to the little room was wide open to compensate for the lack of cool air coming through the vents. A warm breeze filtered into the room, offset by the cool air being pushed out by the fan on the other side of the room. Notes and book pages fluttered against the breeze circulating the room, and an empty soda bottle was knocked over when a few papers rolled and hit it. Empty carryout boxes lay here and there, and a pile of laundry that had grown to momentous proportions was shoved in the corner of a closet.
Soft snoring was the only other noise in the small room. The lone bed with the dark blue sheets crumpled at the foot of it was empty, and the only inhabitant of the room was slumped over his desk, still sitting in a chair. A book was his pillow, and the glow of the computer screen washed over the male's short, scruffy hair and thick, muscle corded neck. The rest of the room was dark, save for the glow of the numbers on the clock that read just past ten. Quite early to have crashed studying, but whose to say he got any sleep the night before?
He wasn't sure what woke him up, but something did. Dark blue eyes slowly drifted open, and his brow furrowed when he tried to remember what he had been doing and what his cheek was lying on. When it came to him, he made a sound of disgust and pulled his cheek away from the page of the English book and tilted his neck this way and that to work out the kinks.
Looking around the darkened room, he stared at the numbers on the clock and made another snort of disgust. "Losing your edge, man. Falling asleep at ten, shame on you."
He glanced back down at the open book and then at the computer screen where his final term paper lay half finished. He felt a swell of pride. Almost done with this sucker, he thought. Made some pretty damn good progress tonight. Semester's nearly over, and then he can leave this hellhole for a long, well deserved vacation.
When the phone rang, he nearly jumped out of his seat, and then glared over at the phone for the unwelcome surprise. He reached over and picked it up.
"Yeah, what?" he asked somewhat irritably. If someone wanted to party, he wasn't in the mood - the night before had been enough, and he was too tired to get out of his comfortable clothes.
"Kento?" Came the weary voice on the other end.
He sat up straighter in his chair, automatically concerned with the tone of voice. "Hey, buddy! Haven't talked to you in a while. What's shakin'? You don't sound too great." Like you haven't slept in a week, he added silently.
"Um, I - I'm at the hospital. My -"
"Hospital! What the hell are you there for?"
"My mother. Kento, she - she was in an accident."
Fear hit his stomach and then worked its way up to his heart. He shot up out of his chair. "What kind of accident? Is she all right?"
"N-no." He hesitated, and the amount of pain expressed in his next words was an almost tangible, living thing. "She . . . she's d - she died. Tonight."
Kento's mouth opened, but no words came out. He sat down hard on the bed and tried to process what he'd just been told. No way . . . no way could this happen. This was some freak dream.
"No shit," he finally whispered.
"Few hours ago."
"No way," Kento barely whispered again. He blinked rapidly as the impact of the statement hit him, and he felt grief slowly climb into his heart. "Oh, man. Oh, man, I'm . . . shit." His voice grew thick, and he swallowed back the lump. "What hospital are you at?"
"Tokyo University. I don't think I'm going to . . . stay here. They told me to go home for the night. Come back in the morning. Not much else I can do here." His halting speech, so carefully devoid of emotion yet filled with so much anguish, tore at Kento's heart. "I'll just go . . . home. For tonight. Come back in - tomorrow."
Kento found himself nodding. "All right, buddy, you do that. I'll just meet you at your house, right? Back at home?" Your mom's house.
"Yeah."
"Okay. You just hang in there, all right? Be careful when you drive home."
"Okay." It was said more as an automatic response than as an agreement.
"I mean it," Kento pressed.
"All right," he said, his voice tinged with annoyance. Kento felt the corners of his mouth quirk in response, despite the heavy grief in his heart.
"I'll be there as soon as I can," he promised. "You can count on it." When he hung up, he had planned to immediately start packing, but the grief overwhelmed him for a moment, and he had to sit down.
"In a few more minutes," he mumbled as he raked a hand through his slightly sweaty hair, and rested his head in his hands.
It didn't take Sage long to arrive at the hospital. The university he went to finished their exams a week ahead of the other universities his best friends attended, and he had been home for four days, relaxing after the headache of studying for exams. He had known about what had happened for a day and a half, courtesy of his mother, and it had sorely put a damper on the beginning of his break.
It was hard for him to believe that something like this could happen to such good people, to such a good woman, and it angered him to an extent that it had. He knew well the unfairness of life, but it seemed to hit them all in the face with this event, even more so when he received a phone call from his mother.
She had died. Her heart couldn't take the strain, and gave out. At the age of fifty-two. Sage had gripped the phone tightly in his hand, closed his eyes against the quiet grief that closed around his heart - not just for the woman who died much too young, but for the son he knew so well.
Now, as the blonde young man pulled into the hospital's parking lot and parked, he sighed to himself, feeling eminently subdued. He put his keys in his pocket and walked toward the doors of the emergency room where he would meet his mother and his friend. He thought of different ways to deal with this situation, to approach his friend and comfort him, but it was hard. He'd never faced something like this, the death of a loved one. He had no idea what he could say to make his comrade feel any better, and he was fairly sure that there was nothing he could say to help him.
His mother had said to just be there for him, and Sage was sure he could do that, but it still felt awkward. He blanched at the thought of apologizing like so many people did - 'I'm sorry for your loss,' 'I'm so sorry this happened,' because that didn't feel right. It never struck him as a useful thing to say in the face of a death.
He didn't spot a familiar face amongst the many people in the ER's waiting room and halls, and it took him another few minutes to spot his mother. As he walked up to her, she turned around and saw him.
Her face was worried as she drew her son in for a hug, which he returned. It made him feel marginally better, and a little guilty, to know his own mother was alive and well. To be able to see her.
"He left," was the first thing she told him. Startled, Sage stared at her. "I'm sorry; I couldn't get a hold of you since you'd already left the house. He decided to go home alone, but I think you should go see him anyway. He doesn't need to be alone right now, Sage."
He nodded. "I agree. Thanks, Mother."
"You're welcome." Before he could turn away, Mrs. Date brushed a hand briefly over her son's golden locks, to which he gave a curious look. "Please, drive safe."
He couldn't even muster up a weak smile at the statement, so he just nodded and walked back out, already going over in his head the quickest route to his friend's house.
It was about an hour and a half before Sage pulled up in front of the cozy two story home in the suburbs of Hagi. It wasn't a large house - it never needed to be, but it always held a little more warmth than his household. A warmth that would probably be absent now that its prominent carrier was gone. He turned off the ignition of the car and sat in the quiet darkness for a moment.
He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to see the toll of grief yet. How could this have happened so soon? So sudden? Why was it that every time true happiness was in their grasp, it was snatched away and crushed? Didn't they deserve to be happy?
Sage gathered himself and got out of the car, walked towards the front door. There was one distant light on, and he took note of the car in the driveway. He knocked on the door and waited with his arms folded for it to open.
A minute later, he could hear mute shuffling, and the door opened.