Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Butterfly Kisses ❯ A Growing Rift ( Chapter 2 )

Butterfly Kisses

A Sequel to Pandora's Box

By Jepardy

 

Weiss were the ones to open Pandora's Box, but can Schwarz handle what was inside?

 

WARNINGS: Violence, language, Yaoi (BradxSchu, YohjixOmi, AyaxKen), references to rape

 

A/N: There is some OCC on the part of Nagi, he is more open with his emotions, and acts slightly more like a kid his age would. Maybe a little OCC on the rest too, but I tried to keep them in character as much as possible. And, I've discovered the more I like a character, the worse I am to them. I killed off my beloved Omi in Pandora's Box, now in this one, Brad's, plain and simply put, a TOTAL asshole. Gomen to Brad fans. Also, I took free liberty to the HOW of Farfie's missing eye.

 

 

//italics// means telepathy

`italics' means thoughts

 

 

Part Two:

A Growing Rift

 

The rift Pandora has been fighting her whole life to close is opening wide again, and the one thing that might save it has been forced away.

 

 

SWITZERLAND

OCTOBER 21 1986:

 

The young girl let out an exasperated sigh as she walked out of the playground and started to make her way home in the last rays of sunlight. It had been over a year since she had made up her mind to have a friend. She still didn't have one. It was hard for her to socialize. Her first four years were spent running constantly, not in a place for more then a month or two at a time. And now that she was trying, she wasn't good at it. She could already speak, read, write, and understand seven languages and could tell you the number 'pie' to its entirety. So she found it hard to fully enjoy a game of Red Rover, no matter how hard she tried. She did her best to just be a normal everyday kid. But still, making friends was hard. She didn't talk much, afraid that she would sound to smart, and consequently in the mind of a five year old, stupid. When she finally did open her mouth, it always came as smart assed, loud mouth, and out spoken. So even after a year, she didn't have any friends. Sure, she could play games with the neighborhood kids, but that was all. She was never invited anywhere, or called to come play a game, or anything. And now most of the other kids were in school for part of the day. Leaving her out once again. Even if it wasn't a total security risk to do something like that, besides the fact she had no past, parents, or even a name, school was something just WAY to far below her. She knew she was about out of time too. Anna had been insisting that they move for sometime now. The girl had been stalling and waiting, and begging for more time. It worked for the most part too. Anna didn't want to piss her off. Anna did everything to make and keep the girl happy. This was just the one thing that she couldn't have. And she knew it.

The sounds of extra footsteps behind jumped her out of her thoughts. She stopped where she was and crossed her arms. Frowning at the leaf blown sidewalk in front of her as she waited for the people to catch up.

"What'd ya want?" she asked them without turning around. Instinctively knowing when they were close enough to hear her.

"Hi there." a woman said as she came around to knell in front of the girl. She was wearing a casual business suit and had short dark hair. The girl just gave her a tired look.

"You're the bad people that's after me. Just tell me what you want so I can say no. I ain't supposed talk to you." the child said in a simple tone that spoke of years of preparation. The woman shot one of her partners, there were two, both men, the girl knew with out seeing, a knowing look.

"Did your mom tell you that?" the woman's tone was sweet, and fake.

"Anna told me." the girl said, wishing these people would just go away. She had been close to a friend, and now they'd have to move, and she'd have to start all over.

"Is Anna your mom?" the woman was trying to get information out of the girl, find out how much she knew, how much she had been taught, and how careful they had to be.

"No. Anna's Anna. I don't have a mom, I have Anna." she said with a roll of her eyes and a tone that said they already knew this and everyone there knew they did. The woman went to say something else, but one of the men moved out from behind the girl and in to her peripheral vision and spoke.

"Why are you speaking in English? We're in Switzerland. And from what we already know, Swedish has been the main language of most of the places you've lived." his tone didn't hold the same fake sweetness that the woman's did. He was all business, and the girl was that business at the moment.

"Cause you people aren't good at Swedish, you're better at English. So I figured I'd just use that, instead having to listen to your horrible pronunciations." she was getting pissed more and more by the moment, and her attitude was plainly bleeding through in to her words.

"If you know we're the bad people, why are you talking to us?" the woman caught her attention again.

"Cause I don't wanna run. I want a friend, and almost had it. If you screw things up for me, I never will." she told them. And decided that she'd had enough. She started walking away again then. Shooting one last comment behind her. "Just leave me and Anna alone." the one man who had not yet spoken started reaching for his gun.

"No." the woman said, standing up and smoothing out the wrinkles in her pants. "She'll kill us all if we move to take her right now. She is much more powerful then we expected."

"Then what do we do?" the man asked as he removed his hand from inside of his coat and crossed his arms.

"We find her weakness, and exploit it to get her back." a wicked grin spread across the woman's face then. The girl wanted a friend, she didn't want to move, and despite the intelligence she possessed, in the mind of a five year old, she knew that the child would still try to stay here for as long as she could. Weather or not Esstet was close.

 

~*~*~

 

That night the girl couldn't sleep. She tossed and turned for hours in her bed. She hadn't told Anna that Esstet had spotted her, stopped her, and even talked with her. She knew if she did that they would move before the sun had even finished setting. She didn't want to move. She wanted a friend, and was damned determined to stay put until she had one. Besides, she figured that she could handle what they had to throw at her. She was only five, but not stupid. She knew how powerful she was. And maybe if they realized what she was capable of they'd lose interest and just let her be. But still, there was something tugging at the back of her mind that told her to just tell Anna, to move. That things would be safer. And it was that tugging that made it impossible for her to sleep. Finally she just gave up and got out of bed, heading instead to Anna's room.

"Anna?" the tiny girl called out from the doorway. Orange eyes peering out softly from below the fall of blue hair. The woman on the bed rolled over slightly and peeked open her sleep filled eyes.

"What is it honey?" she asked as she moved to sit up more.

"I, I.." again her mind was spinning over the events of the day. This was the last chance she would have to come clean, and she still didn't know if she wanted to. "I can't sleep." she finally said. Part of her mind was kicking her for not saying the REASON she couldn't sleep. The other part was cheering her on, telling her that she could kick Esstet's ass by herself, and that too WAS the truth.

"Come here." Anna told her giving off a small smile. Oblivious to the rift in the child's mind. The young girl all put threw herself in to the bed. Cuddling down in the covers and close to the woman who was raising her. Anna smiled down at her, leaning over her briefly and fluttering her eyelashes on the child's cheek in a butterfly kiss. The girl giggled slightly and fought the urge to rub the tickle away. She wanted it there, it was Anna's way of showing she cared, showing she loved the girl weather it was her daughter or not.

"Goodnight." she said softly as she laid down again and hugged the five year old to her. Both fell asleep quickly. Anna with the security that the child she had been giving up everything for was safe in her arms, and the child pushing away all of her conflicting thoughts to simply enjoy the warmth and love that now enveloped her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE PRESENT: OCTOBER 5, 2000

SCHWARZ MANSION

 

"Agh!" Pandora bolted awake with a tangled scream. Not of fright, but of disgust. She all but tore at her cheek, trying to scratch away an unwanted ghost of a memory that stayed there. She feverishly kicked the covers off and flung herself from the bed. She landed in a heap on the floor, but even that was more acceptable to her then the sickening feeling of comfort that had been coursing through her. She stood up and literally shook herself. Trying to get the remnants of something she couldn't place off of her. Once it became clear that it wasn't going away that easy she let out a tangled growl and stormed out in to the hall and towards the bathroom.

"Good Morning Pandora." Crawford mumbled slightly as she passed him on his way out of his own room. He himself was just waking up, though her early morning presence was now an expected thing, he still held some resentment to her for interrupting his 'quite time'. As Pandora passed him though the fury she held in her at the moment was creating an after shock of sorts, and Crawford found himself thrown up against the wall. He remained pinned there until the bathroom door slammed shut with another growl from the woman. As Crawford stumbled forward, trying to regain the balance that had been lost, all he could think was that the loss of his quite time was soon to be the least of his worries concerning Pandora.

Pandora turned the water in the shower to full blast hot as soon as the door shut. She barley took the time to undress before she stepped in. The scalding water turning her skin a bright red nearly instantly. She stood in its sprays trying to let it wash away the feelings she had. As it coursed down her body, her mind couldn't stop flicking in and out. Showing memories she didn't know she had to her. Tearing a rift through her soul. As everything seemed to grow to a crescendo she collapsed on the bottom of the shower stall in sobs. Tears falling for reasons she didn't know.

"What the hells happening?" she choked out to herself, waiting for an answer from the water still falling around her. It never came as she let out one final, tangled scream and passed out over the force of her warring mind.

 

~*~*~

 

It was two hours later when Nagi awoke intent on getting ready for school. As he made his way to the bathroom he noticed the sound of running water. That confused him. No one was ever normally in the bathroom this time of the morning. Crawford always was done before Nagi got up, and Pandora waited till after he left before using the shower, Farfarello wasn't allowed to use this bathroom. He had his own, that had a lack of any thing sharp, and a lack of mirrors, which could be broken and turned sharp. And Schuldich, well Schuldich was normally getting in the shower about the time Nagi was getting HOME from school.

"Hey! I need to get ready for school!" Nagi called out to the occupant as he knocked on the door. There was no response from the bathroom. Nagi took his chances and turned the knob, 'If its open, I'll kick whoever's in there out. If it's locked, I'll go use Farfarello's. No matter how disturbing that may be.' he thought to himself. Even though he knew if it was locked he could just use his powers to open the lock, he had better sense then that. In a place like the Schwarz mansion, doing something like that very easily could get a person killed. The door swung open at his touch. Pandora's cluttered mind had been very much otherwise occupied when she'd stormed in. Locking the door hadn't crossed her mind. As Nagi walked in, annoyed expression set tight on his face in readiness to boot whoever was in there out, he saw Pandora still crumbled on the bottom of the shower stall.

"Fuck!" Nagi cried out in an uncharacteristic tone as one had ever heard from the boy. He dashed over to the shower and turned off the water. It had long since run cold, to the point that Pandora now had a nearly blue shade of skin to match her hair. He quickly grabbed the nearest robe he could find and draped it over Pandora's body before picking her up, with little help from his telekinetics due to how light she was, and dashed out in to the hall way. Once there he stopped. He had no clue what to do from this point, so he did the only thing that came to his mind.

"CRAWFORD!!" the scream echoed through out the building. In less then thirty seconds the man appeared practically running down the hall that led from the kitchen. A scream like that held the merit to get the mans attention away from the financial times. As he seen what Nagi was holding in his arms though he stopped dead in his tracks. A snarl filled up his face as his eyes glared death at the young boy.

"What the HELL are you doing?" he spit out at the youth. More then displeased to see something like this after his talk with the kid not even two nights ago.

"I found her Crawford. She was passed out in the shower when I went in there to get ready for school." Nagi explained to the man. Pleading in his voice for both the understanding that he felt he had no choice, and for Crawford to help him, help Pandora somehow.

"Well, she's obviously not in there anymore, so drop her, and finish getting ready." Crawford told him as he continued to stare daggers through Nagi.

"NANI!" Nagi was all but horrified. This was a team member, not only that but Crawford's prized team member. The person he had them kill their bosses to get. Yet he had no care in the world over her current condition.

"You heard me. Drop her."

"Where?" Nagi asked quietly. Still unbelieving of this. Crawford's eyes left Nagi long enough to glance down at the floor then back.

"Right there looks fine." Nagi's eyes widened in shock even more, but, moved to obey the man. His unspoken threat from earlier still ringing in Nagi's head. As he laid the girl down in the middle of the hall he heard Crawford make a slight huff of approval.

"Now go get ready. And if she's still there when you leave the bathroom, step over her." He snarled and stormed off, back towards the kitchen. Nagi cast one last glance at the body at his feet before moving in to the bathroom.

After Nagi had left for school Crawford ventured back to the hallway. He stared distantly down at the young woman still laid out in the hallway before giving her a slight kick to the side. All he received in return was a stifled moan.

"You had better get with it my dear Pandora, or I'll do it for you." He told the unconscious form then retreated once again.

 

~*~*~

 

"What the hell?" Schuldich managed to mumble as he nearly tripped over the body in the middle of the hall as he staggered to the bathroom to relieve himself after finally waking up. As he took in the form of Pandora, lying naked save for a bathrobe over her, in the middle of the hall, with still slightly damp hair falling over her face and shoulders, he placed a smirk on to his lips.

"What'd ya know, Little Panda bear. And I thought I had a bad night." He laughed to himself as he picked her up and moved to drop her back in to her own room. Oblivious to Crawford's earlier orders. As he was exiting her room, still slightly laughing to him self, he ran right in to Crawford. Crawford didn't give the telepath a chance to react as he grabbed him by both arms and flung him face first against the wall. Pressing his own body against his back to prevent the red head from moving.

"Damn Crawford, I'm all for a morning fuck, but this is even a little rough for you don't....AHH!" Schuldich's comments were cut short as Crawford grabbed a fist full of the younger's hair and yanked it sharply back. Causing Schu to arch his head back to look in to Crawford's face from a nearly upside down position to avoid his hair from being ripped right from his skull.

"First, its nearly two in the afternoon, not morning. Second, I'll fuck you however, wherever, and whenever I fell like it, without a care in the world to your opinions of it. And third and finally, don't you EVER go near her again. For ANY reason. It's your lack of obedience which caused this, any more of your interfering and I might just have to dispose of you." he snarled in to Schuldich's ear.

"Brad I..." Schu started to defend himself before another violent tug of his hair proved there was no point.

"Is that understood?" Crawford growled again as he continued to pull even harder on the hair in his hand.

"Yes." Was all Schuldich could mange to hiss out in pain. At his answer Crawford released his hold on the German and stepped away. Causing the other to fall to the ground with a thump as the weight that had been holding him up disappeared.

"Be in my office in ten minutes." Crawford shot out over his shoulder as he stormed in that direction. Schuldich just moved to lean back against the wall and gave out a silent wish that he had a cigarette on him. As if on cue, one pale, scarred hand came in to his line of sight holding both his cloves, and a lighter.(*1) Schuldich gladly accepted them and lit up as he turned to give a small thanks to Farfarello for reversing their roles slightly and practically reading Schu's mind. The man just looked down at Schu then towards the direction Crawford had walked and gave a small huff.

"If ya got ya choice, I'd go for a given' 'im a blow. In that mood, he'd rip ya ass ta pieces." Farfarello said simply. Knowing as well as Schu did what was in store as soon as he walked in to that office. Schuldich stood and shrugged.

"Not like he hasn't done it before." He mumbled around his clove as he started to head that direction. Not at all looking forward to it, but knowing it would be even worse if Crawford had to come and find him.

 

 

 

 

SWITZERLAND

NOVEMBER 2, 1986:

 

It had been nearly two weeks since Esstet had spoken to the girl. There hadn't been any trace of them. The child took it as a sign that they realized how powerful she was and had decided to leave her and Anna alone. That thought made her a little happier on the inside. In those two weeks she had come close to making a few friends. One girl, Julie, even asked her if she wanted to come to her birthday party next week. That made her ecstatic.

She all but threw the door off its hinges, literally due to an uncontrolled burst of power, as she burst in to the house the her and Anna still used, planning on telling the woman the great news. As soon as she crossed the threshold, the good news fled her mind. Sitting in her living room were the same three Esstet agents who had stopped her on the street. The woman was sitting pristinely on the couch, looking as if she had every right in the world to be there. The two men were standing in front of her. One was pinning Anna down with what had to be telekinesis, the other had a .45 pressed firmly against Anna's temple. The girl staggered and tried to do about a dozen things at once. Scream, run, free Anna, kill all of them, cry, pull her power together enough to do all of that then some. But the only thing that she could actually mange was to panic. Completely and fully panic.

The woman on the couch rose as she watched the girl's expressions fly across her face. This is what she had been waiting for. True, the child had more power then any before her, and any to follow, already at this young age. But it was that age that made her containable. As long as she was kept off, kept in the throngs of panic, fear, and confusion, she would be ruled by the body and mind she had as far as nature was concerned. And that was of a five year old. And a five year old couldn't pull together enough of anything to hurt a fly, much less kill of three highly trained paranormal agents. As soon as the woman felt the first inclines of power begin to come to the child, she spoke.

"Do it now." and with that simple command, the one agent released his hold of Anna and placed it instead on to the child, with the woman strengthening it even more so. At that same second, before the girl had a chance to react and fight, the other man pulled the trigger.

"NOO!" the girl yelled out as Anna's body hit the ground, being pooled by her own blood. The girl fought with everything she had then. But her fear and panic, and now despair over Anna, caused her 'everything' to be nothing more then what a five year old had. Her powers wouldn't come to her, and she was too sacred to try and get them to.

"You are property of the Esstet elders. And this will be a reminder of that, as well as a lesson NOT to run again." the woman told the trashing girl as she approached her, pulling out a syringe as she did so.

"NO!" the child choked out one last time as the needle was imbedded in her and the sedative proceeded to quickly knock her out. The woman gave a satisfied smile and headed for the door. The one man threw the girl over his shoulder and followed. The last, the one to have shot Anna, eyed the room before spreading his hand out in front of him and encompassing the whole scene in to a ball of fire. As the three agents shoved the girl in to the car and drove off the entire house was a pile of burning rubble. There was no evidence left that either Anna, or the girl, had ever been there. And soon both faded out of the minds of anyone who had ever even met them. The only tears that were even shed over them came the next week, when Julie received the disappointment that her new friend wasn't coming to her party.

 

 

SOMEWHERE IN THE ALPS

SEPTEMBER 9, 1988

 

The clocked blinked over from 11:59 to 12 midnight. The girl just stared at it. Part of her mind was telling her that she should at least sing 'Happy Birthday' to herself, she was as of now officially seven. But the rest of her was too tired and sore to care. It had been two years since she had watched Anna die in front of her. Two years spent at Rosenkreuz being tortured. Sure, they called it training, but it wasn't. She didn't need training. She knew what her powers were and how to use them all on her own. It was torture, plain and simple. A way of trying to get her under control. The elders wanted her one hundred percent under their control. To bestow their beliefs on her. She had a few choice words to say about such things. And nearly every one of those words got her a chance to enjoy more torture. They had come close a few times. Got her almost to that point where she would break and become theirs fully. But then her powers would blossom just a little bit more and they would be back at square one all over again. She was still growing in her abilities. Which made it even hard for them to torture her to much avail. From the time she was born she was already more powerful then the elders put together. The more her powers grew, the more she out powered them. The only thing they still had going for them was the simple fact that she was still a child. That there were those precious few moments when they could use her fear against her, and contain her to some extent. But even that was becoming farther and farther in-between. All the shit they put her through made her that much tougher, that much harder to scare the next time they tried. But it didn't stop them. Beatings, with any and every instrument there was, electrocution, mind probes from the best telepaths, they had even raped her a few more times then she wished to count. It was having an affect on her. She was turning colder, harder, more withdrawn. Her words were far and few between, and when they were spoken they bit in to whoever heard them. She was out for her own good and only that. Her eyes had lost any formalities of softness and had become hard. There was an animal hunger that lived in them now, just waiting to escape. She wanted nothing to do with anyone else, and proved that point stubbornly. She had killed more then 150 people since she had arrived. Anyone who looked at her the wrong way seemed to end up dead. It was almost as if she took pleasure out of it. Though despite how strong her powers had become, and still were becoming, she never killed with them. She had adopted a likening to knives, sais in particular. And with never being told, or shown, she could use them with a precision no one before had.

She was just about ready to give up and start singing to herself despite everything when the door to her room flew open. She immediately slammed it shut again with a strong blast of energy, cutting four fingers completely off of the hand that had started to come through. She huffed to her self as she watched them hit the ground. They should have expected something like that from her. She didn't like to be disturbed, and had very definite ways of showing it. It flew open again, and was very quickly barricaded by two telekinesis, both carrying handguns, aimed at her. That wasn't nothing new, and she was about ready to slam it again, when she saw the man laying crumpled in the hall, cradling a bloody stump of a hand to his chest, sobbing out pained cries for help. That brought a smirk to her face, and she allowed the intrusion for the time being anyway. Then the woman walked in. The girl now knew her by name, Victoria Strum, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that this woman was the one who had taken her two years ago, the one who had ordered Anna killed. Despite everything she had been through, all the pain and suffering, that day was still fresh in her mind. And that woman was still the one definite thing that could strike fear in her heart. She didn't stand idly by though. Before Victoria even crossed the thresh hold, the girl was up, out of the bed and trying to gather power from behind her fear. Victoria just stood there and rolled her eyes.

"Don't try it." she told the child. Her voice was cold and hard. All of the sweetness that she had tried to show that first day had never again been there.

"Yeah, says who?" the girl bit out as she tried to focus more.

"We do." came an older voice. One the child had heard before, but never met. One she was supposed to obey but didn't. One of the elders. If they were here, now, it wasn't going to be good for her. As the three old people entered the room, all with determined looks of hating on there faces, the girl lost whatever power she had been gaining. Fear swept over her in a way it hadn't since the day Anna was killed. It overcame her in its entirety and shut her down so to speak. She fell back against the bed, trying to run away in the least. It didn't work. She was immediately hosted up and wrapped in a telekinetic force so strong not only couldn't she move, it was hard for her to breathe. She still did her best to kick and scream and try to get away as they dragged her like that from her room and down mindless dark corridors towards a laboratory. It didn't work, if she had been able to even get the smallest part of her powers to come forward she could destroy them all. But she couldn't, fear was over powering her reactions. As she was roughly forced in to the room, Victoria paused them for a moment. Long enough to grab a pair of scissors in one hand, and the tangle of bright blue hair in the other.

"NOOO!" the girl screamed out as the scissors sliced through the mess of hair. Butchering it, cutting it to a level inches above her shoulders, barley level with her ears.

"NO NO NO!" she sobbed out as Victoria held up the nine or so inches of hair she had taken from the girl in front of her face and dropped it. That hair, long and wild, was all the girl had had left from Anna. It wasn't much, but the simple insistence that the girl always keep her hair long, no matter what, or how powerful, the protest was, still kept the two of them connected. Now even that had been taken away from her. Her strength gave out then. She didn't have anything left, not even the will to call the power that couldn't top her fear. She was roughly strapped face down on to a table. Tick metal cuffs anchoring her wrists, ankles, shoulders, hips, and waist. If she hadn't been so caught up in fear and hate and loss, she would have realized what was coming. There was a reason her neck hadn't been strapped down as well. Victoria moved to stand next to the three elders as the technician took over. Her hair was no longer in the way, the two sliver specks shone brightly on the base of her neck. The technician stepped forward and gently traced his finger over them. Causing the girl to come back to her senses and try to struggle again. It did no good. The technician could barely contain his manic glee as he picked up the needle. It was nearly four inches long, filled with a thick silver liquid. It was the genetic encoding of the elders genes. She was created the first time from them, and this was like her booster shot. It would tie her directly to the elder's powers. Hopefully giving them the control that they needed over her.

The needle bore down in to her neck, past the skin, and even bone. Inserting the codes directly in to her spinal cord and brain stem. Her screams were enough to deafen everyone in a ten-mile radius. It was a pain like none ever could imagine. And passing out wasn't an option. The liquid was being sent directly in to her nervous system, keeping her conscious no matter what. The three elders just smiled at her unbearable misery. They COULD have given her something to knock her out before. But they didn't want that. They wanted her to feel the pain, pain keeping her fear alive and her powers at bay. And also teaching her a lesson not to try and disobey them again.

After what seemed like an eternity of pain, long ago her vocal cords giving out against her screams, it stopped. The needle withdrew. The three elders looked down at the childs neck. No longer was it simply two small marks. Now there was a delicate fox, imprinted with silver, curled around the base of her neck. The two original marks glinted out as the eyes. The elders gave slight smiles and nods of approval. Victoria gently riffled the still sobbing girls hair. It no longer had its color. The DNA streams of the old ones had corrupted her own DNA stream. Her hair now was a color paler then pale, tinted with the markings of silver. Giving it a glistening color. A pale silver/blue scorned through with unidentifiable white. The child creaked open one tear strained orange eye at Victoria. The woman was startled, the hair that fell in to the eye proved one point solidly. Her hair and eyes now looked horrible together. Clashing in a way that none before could, yet giving her an even more animal look to her whole self.

"Think of it this way." Victoria told the child as she began to walk away. "At least now you finally have a name, Silver Fox." then the room was left with only the sound of the woman's hollow laughter as the door slammed shut, leaving her alone in the darkness. The child, now known as the Silver Fox, and Esstet's greatest weapon, gave one last sob of pain before her mind finally fell in to the darkness of unconsciousness.

 

 

THE PRESENT: OCTOBER 5, 2000

SCHWARZ MANSION

 

"Hey, Schuldich." Nagi called as he walked in to the living room. The man in question had been laying out on the couch, half asleep. At Nagi's loud interjection he bolted straight up, startled. Only to fall back down again as the searing pain in his lower half made its self noticed.

"Ahh, don't do that kid." The man hissed out through clenched teeth as he moved once again to sit up. At a much slower pace this time. Nagi looked at him carefully for a second, a slight worried look crossing his face.

"Why do you let him do that Schu if you cant walk straight for the next two days?" he asked the man. It was no secret what Crawford and the German did behind their closed doors most of the time. Sometimes Schu even liked it, looked forward to it. Times when Crawford was pissed off and needed release WEREN'T those times.

"Because Nagi, if I didn't let him, he'd do it anyway. Then I wouldn't be able to walk at ALL for month. Now what did you want?" he asked as he tenderly stood up, stretching the best he could, as to not inflict more pain on himself.

"Crawford wants to see you." The boy said as he moved to take a seat on the couch that Schuldich had emptied.

"NANI! Again?" the German asked giving Nagi a nearly horrified look.

"No, no, no," The boy quickly amended. "Its about a new mission." //I hope at least. Even Crawford can't be THAT ruthless.// he added in his head.

"Oh, okay." Schuldich said, then responded to the comments Nagi had forgotten could be heard by the telepath. //Yes, he can bishounen, just be glad I'm around to get the worst of that side of him.// and with that Schuldich headed towards Crawford's office. Hoping beyond belief Nagi was right and it WAS only about the mission. Nagi was left alone in the living room, feeling a profound sadness for Schu's predicament, and at the same time hoping that the German would always be there, and in that position, so he wouldn't have to be.

 

 

 

 

(*1) That idea of Farfie being ready with Schu's smokes in the morning came to me from my 6-year-old sister. I'm a smoker and everyone in my house knows not to talk to me before I have my first smoke. One morning I stumbled in to the living room half awake and the first thing I seen was Haní rolling her eyes and handing me my own cloves and a lighter.