Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Bradley's Devils ❯ Births and Deaths ( Chapter 1 )

Insert standard disclaimers. Try to steal it, and I'll sic the person who inspired this Farf on ye.

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Bradley's Devils

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In Switzerland:

"Waaaaaaah!"

"Congratulations, Mrs. Crawford. You have a beautiful little boy."

"Stop acting like this is a normal hospital, James."

"Yes, dear. I'm sorry."

A pause filled only by the little sounds a newborn child makes.

"James?"

"Yes, dear?"

Lila reached a hand out to him, and he took it, gently. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Another pause.

"Lila? Lila!"

She was dead.

He was surprised at how quickly her hand went cold. The child had not yet been named, or even had its umbilical cord cut, and yet he didn't feel up to it. But this was Lila's child. He would cherish it always for that. Not knowing what to do, he pulled out his pocket knife and cut the cord as close to his son as he dared, wincing at the fresh bout of screams it caused. "There, there. Hush, child. We'll survive. It'll be okay…"

He heard the footsteps and turned as the door opened. The friendly young man who had found them trapped in their car in the snow leaned halfway into the room. "Are you alright?"

"My- my wife is dead," James told him. "But otherwise, we're fine. Thank you again for offering us shelter."

"It's no problem." The young man stepped into the room. "May I see him?"

Wordlessly, James held him out.

The other took him gently, an expression of awe covering his face. "Thank you," he said. "You may join your wife now."

James had only a moment to look surprised before he crumpled and his body cooled.

**Two fresh bodies,** Darin sent to the telepath in medical. **Let the fifth-years do an autopsy on them. Causes of death are birth and telepathic shut-down, but let them find that out.**

His command acknowledged, he strode out of the room, holding the squealing child. A thought, and it was quiet. "What an ugly baby you are," he told it. "You deserve an ugly name. Bradley should do it. Bradley Crawford." He turned a corner. "Alice foresaw you, Bradley. She says you will be one of the greatest precognitives ever. And so here you are, ready to be trained by us. Welcome to ß, kid."

~~~-~~~

Five years later:

Bradley Crawford had his first vision: red hair and green eyes. He kept silent, because Alice-mama was in a bad mood today and he didn't want to be hit.

In North Germany, near the border, a little girl was born to two fairly nondescript parents. She was their first daughter and third child, and her elder brothers gazed silently at her, awed by this tiny little thing that seemed so magical. Then, upon being poked with a needle, she screamed, and the elder boy nodded.

"That's what you were like," he said.

"Hey!" the younger said.

"Hush," said their father. "I won't have any fighting in this room."

~~~-~~~

Two years later:

Bradley was being taught how to hold and fire a gun.

Erika had learned how to speak as well as her parents or better. She was working on Russian so as to better understand the people next door.

In Ireland, a nun heaved off of the bed one last time, and then bore down with all her weight, and the makeshift doctor caught the baby girl and quickly went through the rest of the procedure as best as she could remember from the last time she had helped her father, three years gone. She remembered most everything, and both mother and child seemed to be healthy.

Ruth looked fondly down at the daughter she had carried secretly for the past nine and a half months. "Jei," she named her. "For my godmother."

The Mother Superior nodded gravely. It was fitting.

In a room nearby, Ruth's sister wondered just how much of the truth she should tell her husband about the child they were adopting.

In Japan, a rich man's daughter met and fell in love with the boy who would ultimately bring her to ruin.

~~~-~~~

Five years later:

Bradley had his first acknowledged vision. He told Darin, quietly, that Alice-mama was going to die suddenly in about half a week. When he was proved right, his training intensified.

Erika spoke both German and Russian fluently now, and was beginning to surprise her family by seemingly reading their minds. A member of the Gestapo passing through noticed this, reported it, and was assigned to watch her.

Jei smiled up at sister Ruth. She was so nice to him!

Ruth smiled back, but sighed inwardly for the nth time that her daughter's adopted father insisted that she be raised a boy.

Unable to pay for an abortion, Sayeko Naoe watched helplessly as her lover abandoned her and his child. Eight months later, she gave birth prematurely in the squalid back streets of Tokyo with no one to assist her and joined her child - she didn't care if it was male or female - in wailing, though for a different reason.

After only six weeks, she gave up begging and returned to prostitution.

~~~-~~~

Three years later:

Brad watched as his classmates went off to different parts of the world, then turned and trudged back into the building. He was the only precognitive, and precogs always needed extra training since the future did not overlap well with the present, and he still had difficulty hearing the telepaths.

Erika's family were shot and killed, and the Gestapo took and trained her to be one of them, to gather information for them, and to kill for them. She also started to learn her third language, English. When they told her that she needed a new name, she volunteered to be called Schuldich, and was known as that ever after.

Jei stared, bemused, at the blood on his hands. He looked at his parents, and at his sister, and then back at his hands again. Then he set off to look for his real mother - no, her real mother - Sister Ruth.

She passed out before she could harm her.

When he awoke, Sister Ruth told him that his parents were dead. She told him that it was a murderer who had done it, that he had been punished, and that the only reason Jei was still alive was because he discovered by accident that the perfect little boy with the strange eyes and hair was really a little girl.

Jei stared at her in horror, and refused to grow out her hair or to wear a dress. That night in the chapel, she prayed to God with tears streaming down her cheeks, asking him why he had allowed her family to die.

God never answered.

Sayeko was admitted to a hospital upon the certification that she had AIDS. Her little girl, still unnamed, wandered from room to room, looking lost. Sayeko died at the end of the year, and her daughter was returned to the streets.