Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Coming Home ❯ 18 ( Chapter 18 )

18

Cruelty and consequence - cannot eliminate this relevance

Your selfishness, your hatefulness cannot take away my immanence

Tokyo.

Traffic, neon, skyscrapers.

People.

The drive here had been uneventful, even though Brad was acting like someone out of a spy thriller. He'd been driving with one eye on the road and the other on the rear view mirror, his knuckles white on the wheel. He wouldn't tell me if he'd Seen anything, just that time was of the essence.

As we passed into the heart of the city, my headache thumped back into life. It was early evening, and people were still out and about in droves. Their mental voices murmured and hissed in my head like static, the language still so foreign that only the strongest images and intentions came through clearly. The strongest, and usually the least pleasant.

I'd ridden with my eyes shut, headphones on tight and the volume cranked. This goth stuff wasn't too bad; it was fairly repetitive in rhythm, and I hoped it would graft itself onto my consciousness to the point it became part of my shielding. At least it was pleasant to listen to, whether it proved useful or not. Since I wasn't watching the scenery, I didn't get to see the outside of the building we stopped at; once we had parked all I saw was the dimly lit inside of a small parking garage.

That was nearly a week ago. None of us had seen the garage, much less the car or the greater world beyond, since then. Except Crawford.

I paced around the apartment, my bare feet making little noise against the soft carpeting. Through the efficient courtesy of the yakuza, we were living in this small apartment almost in the middle of the city. The apartment itself was passable, though the carpet was a sickly wasabi color. Maybe that was how we got to stay here: they couldn't rent it out with that nasty carpet. But it was soft enough. Still, the location could have been better. For the past five days, from all around, I could feel the constant press of foreign minds against shields that were still disastrously thin. I couldn't concentrate: I could barely rub two thoughts together without losing track of them.

To make things worse, Brad wouldn't let me smoke inside, banishing me to the narrow balcony only when no one was outside to notice. And that was damn rare. He said that the place was too small to deal with the smoke, and Nagi was still too weak to be "subjected to your second-hand smoke," as Brad so gracefully put it.

True, the place was small. Brad and I had separate bedrooms, though: no shacking up for him. We'd converted the walk-in closet into a chibi-sized bedroom for Nagi, and Farf got the couch. At the moment, I could hear Farf in the bathtub, and I sensed Nagi sleeping in his cozy little bed.

I found myself staring out the window and reminiscing about our first apartment in Japan, back when Takatori called the shots and the living was generous. Truth be told, I didn't miss much from those days, but I did miss my slippers. We had each been given appropriate Japanese house shoes, and Brad insisted that we adhere to the local customs in that regard. But I had taken a fundamental dislike to mine, more out of spite at the whole culture than anything about the shoes themselves. Okay, so they didn't fit right. My feet are long and slender, not easy to accommodate in Japanese fashion. With Brad's grudging approval I had imported two sets of Russian men's ballet slippers, one crimson and gold and the other royal blue and silver. Silk brocade, and the most comfortable things I'd ever worn.

I'd left them behind, with my yellow scarf and favorite sunglasses and ninety percent of my music collection.

Now here I was, back where it all started. Nagi could barely walk without help, though he was managing mugs and spoons fairly well. He still had trouble with speech, the English words coming back slowly if at all. The doctor confirmed that it looked like a stroke. There wasn't anything we could do other than the rehabilitation we had already started, getting him moving on his own and talking more. The doctor was a bit puzzled, as the kid didn't have any risk factors; not that we could tell him about the psychokinesis, of course.

Basically, my little teammate had blown a fuse. We could only guess the extent of the damage. I hadn't seen him use his gift since the tower; I wondered if he would ever be able to again. I tried not to think about what would happen if he needed it and found it broken.

Farfarello was another story. But that's kind of typical for him. It's scary when the only word that fits is "miracle," especially when talking about our resident deity hater. Still, the doctor ran the tests and looked at the pictures from the CAT scans and that other thing - the MRI - and had no reason to think he was looking at images of living tissue.

Far was alive because he still had work to do. There was no other explanation.

I hadn't bothered to ask the doctor if he could help me. Not much a normal-folk medic could do about a broken telepath. It seemed as though the few days I had fought to regain some measure of control had been in vain. The moment I was within range of a crowd bigger than a hundred, the pressure had started to mount and my shields had collapsed like a house of cards. I didn't know how to tell Brad, so I hadn't bothered.

Somewhere nearby, a man was beating his girlfriend, a mother chastised her child, and twenty thousand people got ready for an early dinner.

Behind me, I heard someone enter the room, and I could tell by the feel of his mind that it was Crawford. Without turning I said, "I want to go out tonight."

"No, Schuldig. You are not to leave the apartment at this time."

Incredulous, I spun to glare at him. He was picking up the magazines I'd left strewn on the coffee table and not even looking at me. "What, so now I'm grounded?"

Brad heaved a sigh of long suffering and infinite patience, which I knew to be bullshit, and said, "This would not be a good time. You need to be here. Nagi is still mending, and I can't totally rely upon Farf."

"When, then?" I demanded. "You can't keep me penned up in here, I'll go crazy! You know that, you bastard! This is torture." I tapped the side of my head hard enough to sting and said, "The whole fucking city is in here with me! If I don't surround myself with real, physical, warm-bodied people, their thoughts will drag me under and I won't be any damn use to you at all!"

"I won't have you going off and getting smashed tonight, Schuldig. I know what you want to do, and I won't allow it. You would be putting us all at risk of discovery, and I swear to any god you name, I will shoot you myself before allowing that to happen. Do you understand me?" He stared hard, trying to make me back down.

I swallowed, and without deciding to I dropped my gaze. Damn him. "Crawford, it's really bad for me here. I understand that we had to do a lot of things to get the Elders, but staying here now is killing me."

"You won't die from this, Schuldig. I'll let you know when it's safe for you to go play, fair enough? But no drugs, and you'll take it easy on the booze." His eyes had gone a little softer than they had been, but there was no ignoring the determination in his stance. He would rein me in, or I would buckle under the pull of his will.

"You know, you could make this a little easier for me," I murmured, changing tactics. "You could distract me a little." I didn't really think he would, but I was now in the mood to fight dirty.

"This is not the time, Schu." Brad spared me a disapproving look before going back to neatening the damn room.

"Why not? Why isn't it the right time, Brad?" I stalked over to him and stared right into his face. "I don't know if you remember, but we did share something intimate and powerful only a couple weeks ago. Since then, you've been playing hot and cold with me. It's never been the right time to talk it through, and it's been tearing me up. I thought you were my anchor. I thought we had something." Cold chills ran through me as I realized that I was basically daring him to either accept me as a lover or ditch me right there. One does not idly dare Brad Crawford. I had the sick feeling this would not come out in my favor, but bigmouth had struck again and my words hung in the air like ice crystals.

"We did, Schuldig. We did share something. In fact, we have shared many things over the years." He set down the stack of magazines and other clutter and regarded me coolly over the top of his glasses. "But you will have to get it through your thick skull that the sun does not rise and set at your whim, and people will not always give you what you want. Sometimes, what you want is not what you need, and may actually be bad for you. Have you ever stopped to think about that?"

I was thoroughly baffled now. He hadn't done either of the things I'd expected. And he was making sense. "But, you wouldn't be bad for me, Brad," I whispered, not sure just what he'd meant by that. "We want each other, why can't you just admit that? We're not Esset anymore, we don't belong to them, we can be free to love each other, can't we?"

"Not today, we can't. As far as being free, are you so certain that we are, in fact, free, Schuldig? Look at us. Two of us are grievously injured, your telepathy is barely under control and I've been having visions damn near non-stop ever since you left me in that beach hut with no goddamn watch!" Brad caught himself before tipping over into a full-blown rant, the first display of honest emotion I'd seen from him in several days, and only one of a dozen or so times in total. He took a deep breath and pushed his glasses up. "Schuldig, what I'm trying to tell you is, we're still Schwarz. Whatever else may come, the team must survive. And right now we don't have the time for personal affairs, of any sort."

I sighed. I couldn't argue with him. Oh, I wanted to, but I knew I'd lose. "Brad, I still love you. You know that, right?"

Brad took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing a little. "I know what you said, Schuldig."

I moved to cross the space between us, reaching out to touch, to offer comfort.

Brad pulled back. "No, Schuldig."

Anger flared in me, spurred on by the asshole somewhere within a city block who wasn't content with beating his girlfriend, she was on the floor and he was kicking her and insulting her and getting harder than he'd been in months with her or with his best friend, a guy who couldn't bowl worth a damn and owed him money for drinks but wouldn't pay up because his own wife was pregnant again. Anger, amplified by a hundred thousand cracked mirrors, took hold of my own frustration and fear and yanked my soul to its scabby knees. Fury raped out my consciousness like it had so many times before, when Far went too far and killed and killed and killed, or back in Rosenkreuz when -

"Fuck you!" I screamed at him. "You're what's making me crazy, Brad! First you act like you want me, then you can't get away fast enough. You're stringing me along, you know I love you and you're using that to keep me in line! I don't appreciate you pulling this crap! I don't know what kind of man you were before, but Rosenkreuz sure trained you well. You --"

He slapped me, hard enough to snap my head to the side. I never saw it coming. In a low, controlled voice he said, "I have never called leader privilege, Schuldig. I never would. That is not why I had sex with you, or why I occasionally slip and let you get the impression that there will be more. Frankly, I am offended that you could even go there." Brad's expression changed from furious to bitter as he straightened his glasses with a shove. "If we were free to pursue things at our leisure, I assure you, you would not be disappointed. But in case you have forgotten, we do not have that luxury. I would prefer to see you pissed and alive rather than satisfied and dead."

I stood there, hand on my still-stinging cheek. "I want to go out," I growled, feeling more trapped than ever. I felt humiliated, used, and horribly, horribly bereft. "I can't stay here right now."

Brad looked momentarily hurt. Then he swallowed and nodded. "You do what you need to do. I would rather you did not, but I know I can't stop you. Just don't go yet. Tonight is not a safe night, as things stand right now. Will you trust me as your leader and as Oracle, if nothing else?"

Part of my mind screamed at me to apologize to him, to break down and cry, to do anything a little bit human rather than stand there with stoic disregard for my own, and his, feelings. But, even if it was a lie for Brad Crawford, for me it was truth: Rosenkreuz had trained me well. I was not a man so much as a weapon, and weapons aren't supposed to feel. A little part of my mind was weeping, pleading, wanting to reach out. The trained part held it at gunpoint.

I nodded stiffly. "May I go to my room now?" I asked, voice harsh.

Brad looked as though he, too, had a little part of his mind begging him to let it go. All he said was, "Dismissed."

I stopped by the kitchen on my way to my room. If I couldn't leave the apartment, I would lock myself away and not deal with his attitude. Never mind that logic and training told me that I had just gone through a textbook telepathic psychotic episode. Never mind that I knew Brad recognized the symptoms, too, and was humoring me just like he was supposed to at times like that. No, fuck logic and fuck training.

"And fuck you too!" I shrieked, hands gripping the sides of my head, letting the plastic jar of mustard bounce off the linoleum floor at its leisure. I focused on the offensive little turd with the battered girlfriend who even now was apologizing to him and offering to fix his favorite dinner. I didn't know who the hell he was, I didn't give a damn. I sent all the anger and pain and violence spilling back into his head. The last thing I got from him was his girlfriend's shriek as the phone slipped from his suddenly numb fingers.

When I came to, I was lying on my bed with a cool cloth across my forehead. For one blissful moment I thought it was a few days before the Esset ritual; psi strain took me down, I knew that's what it was, god only knows I had enough stress to bring this on.

But Brad, not Nagi, sat at my bedside, his old pair of eyeglasses on the table, and his hair about two weeks overdue for a trim.

The last three weeks filled themselves in like rainwater filling a shallow puddle: a little here, a little there, then it all blurred together into mud.

"Here, drink this," Brad told me, offering me a warm mug.

I could smell the rich, dark-roasted coffee, and my mouth watered. As much as I wanted the taste of it, I knew my body was fiercely craving the caffeine. I took the mug with shaking hands.

"Care to tell me what happened?" he asked, his voice quiet.

I tried to remember, but my head started to hurt. "I'm not sure," I whispered, then sipped some more coffee. "What did I do?" Sudden panic hit me. "I didn't hurt the kid, did I?"

"No, you didn't hurt him. Or any of us, though I think I came close to being your target. Between your attitude and my temper, those episodes of yours can be a dangerous thing."

I couldn't tell if he was joking; with him, it could go either way. "I remember being mad, pissed as hell, actually. I don't think it was mine."

"Good. I'd hate to think it was." This time he smiled a little. "How's your head?"

"Hurts. Been worse. Been better, too." My memory puddle deepened; shame rose up and with it a wave of nausea. I fought both down. "God, Brad. What did I do?"

"Well, you didn't shoot anyone, and you didn't hurt yourself this time, backlash headache aside." He regarded me critically. "But I think you did attack a civilian, and it may have cost us some time. I've Seen that we'll have to move to another location sooner than I'd hoped, but other than the inconvenience it won't be a major problem."

I closed my eyes and held the mug out to him. He took it from me; I could hear him set it on the nightstand. "Great. Just great. Does it help if I say the little bastard deserved it?"

Brad snorted a laugh. "Not one bit. I swear, if you aren't the biggest piece of trouble I've ever met, I don't know who would take that honor." He shook his head, then brushed his hair back with one hand. "Schu, you have to get control of this thing. Telepathy is an integral part of who you are, don't let it destroy you. I know you got hurt at the tower, I know Rosenkreuz messed you up inside, but I also know you are stronger than they are, and you can get past this."

I reached for his hand, my eyes just barely open. The unique and soothing silence flooded me as my skin touched his. At least this still worked. Then suddenly I understood, and all emotion faded before the brilliance of the knowledge: if I thought he was using me, then I must be using him too. He gave me silence, a reprieve from the yammering voices that my shields were too flimsy to keep totally out. Bare skin contact strengthened that effect. No wonder all I could think of was getting this man naked - it wasn't just eroticism, it was self-preservation!

He gazed into my eyes as though reading my mind, though with his depth of understanding he would never really have to do that to know what I was thinking. Brad gave me a small smile and a nod. "You see? I don't trust our motives, Schu. There may be something real here, but this is a survival situation. Pardon my crudeness, but you would fuck anyone to stay alive, and we both know that." He leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips. "The thing is, I won't let you."