Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Coming Home ❯ 69 ( Chapter 69 )

69

 

Your eyes they often lie and leave me feeling misunderstood

 

“Are you sure this is necessary, Brad?” I asked, my voice still not quite back to its former strength. “I've only just gotten over bronchitis, for God's sake.”

 

“Keep it down!” Brad hissed, tossing a look back over his shoulder. “Yes, it's necessary. It's only for about six weeks, Schuldig.” He paused in his repacking to move closer to me and touch my shoulder. “Don't worry, I've Seen us meeting up again in late April. They just have to be kept apart for a while.”

 

::Oh, shit.:: I whispered into his mind, finally catching on. ::Easter. Does he know when it is?::

 

::I don't think so. But if they're together, it will be bad.::

 

I nodded. “All right, I'll quit the bitching. Where are we supposed to go?”

 

“Anywhere but Germany,” Brad replied. Then he looked into my eyes, a soft sadness within that glance. “Even there. Just be careful, Schuldig. It's not just your life you're playing with now.”

 

I swallowed, hope and shame burning within my chest. “Maybe he'd eat better there,” I offered, trying for some kind of rationalization.

 

“Whatever,” Brad muttered, pulling away from me. “There are Japanese restaurants all over the world, I'm sure you can manage something clever.”

 

“Brad, you're really confusing me,” I confessed. “You act like there's no big deal if I see him, then you get all cold when it looks likely. I don't understand you.”

 

Brad straightened his glasses, then regarded me with a cool look. “Schuldig, what I See colors everything. You know I can only say so much of it without risking backlash. Now, think for once.” With that he turned away and resumed packing.

 

I heaved a sigh, which turned into a shallow cough. Damn, over twenty years of stellar health and now this shit. Maybe I could manage to sneak in to see a doctor somewhere, make sure this wasn't turning into asthma or something stupid like that.

 

Brad stood bolt upright like a startled animal. “Schuldig,” he rasped, “whatever you just decided, don't do it. Don't ask, just promise me.”

 

A chill tickled down my back. I hated when he did that shit. “All right, I promise. Can you tell me­-”

 

“I said don't ask!” he barked, louder than he'd planned.

 

Behind us, Farfarello looked up from his book, and Nagi stared at us with suspicious eyes.

 

“Jeez, Brad, chill,” I hissed. “Why don't you just tell me where to go, and how long to stay there, then? I'm tired of trying to guess what you want me to do.”

 

Brad took a deep breath, held it for a few moments before releasing it with a low whistle. “I can't. Not this time.” He turned to look at me, his eyes dark and haunted. “I can't know where you are. If I know…” Brad glanced back toward Farfarello. “Please tell me you understand my meaning, Schuldig. If you can't manage that, I don't know how we'll survive the next seven months.”

 

Seven months? Hell, it's nearly been a year already… I stood there with my mouth hanging open for several seconds before pulling myself together and answering him. ::No, I follow. Are you sure you'll be safe alone with Far?::

 

::It's the only way. I won't send Nagi alone, and one of us has to watch Farfarello. He's less likely to attack me than you, Schuldig. We already know that.:: He strode around to the front of the car and leaned against the faded blue hood. Bracing his hands behind him, he stretched backwards, baring his face to the sky. ::Just keep Nagi safe until Easter is past,:: he told me, his mental tone weary and very nearly frightened. ::One crisis at a time, and this one looks ugly.::

 

I sat on the hood next to him and leaned against his shoulder. Ever since that fever delirium had stripped my shields to nothing, the thought of being away from Brad made me very uncomfortable. I hated feeling so damn vulnerable, but I had to admit that I needed his quiet, perhaps more than ever now. While we traveled through Europe, my ability to keep people out of my head seemed to wax and wane like the moon. Sometimes even Brad's quiet was not enough. The thought of losing all pretense at shielding scared the piss out of me. If Brad's gift might drive him mad, mine was almost certain to be my undoing.

 

“Hey,” Brad said, gently tugging a lock of my hair. “Stop brooding. You won't be alone that long. I wouldn't leave you out there like that.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, the gesture so simple it nearly brought tears to my eyes. Brad took hold of my hand and said, “We need to get going. It'll be okay, Schu. You'll make the right choices on this one. Just remember, it's not about you, or me, this time.”

 

I nodded. “Right. I'll take care of him.”

 

“I know you will.”

 

Less than an hour later, Nagi and I were helping ourselves to a nondescript car at a crowded parking lot. More to see if he could than out of necessity, Nagi unlocked the doors with his gift. He frowned, the first sign of an oncoming headache, but he got the car open and even started it for me before dropping into the passenger seat with a soft grunt.

 

“Thanks, kiddo,” I murmured, grateful I didn't have to hotwire the damn thing. I wanted to keep my concentration on our surroundings, not on the car. So far this had gone easily, but I never trusted easy. “Where to?”

 

“Anywhere but here,” he replied, his voice soft with pain.

 

Groping around with one hand, I grabbed my pack and hauled it to the front seat. “There's medicine in this. Find some and take it.”

 

Nagi opened a bottle of water from his own pack, then wrestled the headache pills from mine. “These won't make me sick, will they?” he asked, though I could tell he was desperate enough to take them anyway.

 

“No, chibi, these are the light ones.” I'd noticed that this car had a CD player, so I asked Nagi if music would aggravate his headache. I didn't want to make it worse, but without Brad there, I wanted something to help me keep my head to myself.

 

The kid frowned and said, “It depends. If it's your usual music, it probably would. If you're singing along, it definitely would.”

 

“Ha ha. Cute. Look around and see what's here, then. Maybe the guy listened to classical,” I grumbled.

 

“I have some Mozart,” Nagi offered, holding out a disc.

 

I sighed. “Fine, put it in.” At least it was sound, and rhythm, even if it didn't have words.

 

The more I listened, the more I started to actually like it.

 

After a few minutes of my tapping along on the steering wheel, Nagi took the CD back out and stuffed one of mine into the player. “I can't stand your drumming, Schuldig. If this will keep your hands on the wheel, then I'll deal with the noise.”

 

I snorted a laugh. Even in our current circumstances, the kid was totally deadpan. He could be a miniature Ben Stein for all the inflection he used.

 

Living out of a car was not my idea of a good time, but I knew that we had to put some distance between ourselves and the other half of our team. I wasn't sure if Nagi knew why we were doing this, and I didn't really want to ask him. He had a lot of trouble with abandonment, and I could tell he felt as though Brad had ditched us.

 

All I could do was make the best of it, so I made sure we had supplies for several days and headed off on a random tangent.

 

We ended up in Amsterdam.

 

Spring tulips and other flowers were already making a riot of color along the roadways. I caught Nagi looking at them in a little bit of wonder: he'd never seen these kind of flowers outside of a cut arrangement before. I couldn't help but smile. He looked like a regular teenager, traveling with perhaps an older brother or something and seeing more cool things than he'd expected.

 

I found us safe places to sleep, always making certain that there were no psi-talents nearby and no one who might be inclined to question us or cause trouble. Sometimes we slept in warehouses, great empty behemoths by night, forsaken by all but the rats. Said rodents steered clear of us, never getting close enough to be a hazard. I suspected it had something to do with Nagi's telekinesis. Every psi has a built-in survival circuit, and it was very likely that any rat trying to make a snack out of the kid would find itself squashed into rat-spam.

 

I managed to do a little sight-seeing for my own curiosity, even bought a postcard though I knew better than to mail it. Wouldn't do to have such a tangible link between me and Yohji, tempting as it might have been. No, I would settle for seeing what there was to see and telling Yohji about it over coffee someday.

 

Nagi found a few local foods he could tolerate without too much trouble, and even got some decent rest. I realized he hadn't been sleeping well ever since I'd gotten bronchitis. Farfarello had been lucid for far too long at one stretch; Nagi knew the snap was coming, and with me out of commission it could have been ugly. Far always obsessed over Nagi through the Easter holiday; I had never quite figured out why. Whether he thought Nagi holy or a mote in God's eye didn't really matter: worship and destruction go hand in hand with Farfarello. He is the archetype of man-who-slays-his-god; either way would bring disaster.

 

After several fairly pleasant days of being unnoticed tourists, I started to feel the pull of the road again. We couldn't stay put for too long. I found us a car, picked a direction, and left a spring-bright Amsterdam behind me.

 

This time, Nagi was more willing to talk as we drove. I could tell he was missing the others, but he didn't seem to be blaming them anymore. He just asked me when we'd meet up again, and let it drop. Then he asked, “Are we going back to Japan?”

 

“Do you want to?” I asked back, glancing at him. “It's about as risky as anyplace else, except Germany right now.” My heart pounded; I was hoping he would say `yes'. It had been months since I'd seen Yohji. More than half a year, I realized. He'd probably forgotten about me by now.

 

Nagi regarded me with too-shrewd eyes. “You want to see him. I can tell.”

 

“And? Your point?”

 

“What about Brad, Schuldig? I've seen you two together. The way he touches your hair.”

 

I sighed. How could I explain this to him? Then I realized, as far as I knew Brad had never had “the talk” with Nagi. How the hell could I even start to explain?

 

His voice almost shy, Nagi asked, “Does he touch your hair too? The way Brad does?”

 

A smile snuck onto my face and stayed there as memories played through my head. “No, not the way Brad does,” I replied, still trying to figure out just what I should tell him.

 

“Is it just for the sex, then?”

 

“Nagi!”

 

“What?” he retorted, his expression bland.

 

I cleared my throat. “No, it's not just about sex. What do you know about that, anyway?”

 

Nagi graced me with one of his patronizing sighs. “Schuldig, I was at Rosenkreuz too, remember? I know about sex.”

 

My face went hot. Of course he knew about sex. What kind of an idiot was I, thinking that maybe he was innocent? “I'm sorry, kiddo.”

 

“For what?”

 

For what? My mind churned up history, showing me exactly what I was sorry for. Viktor. Sonndheim. Takatori. My jaw clenched and I swallowed against a burning sensation in my throat. “I'm sorry for forgetting sometimes that you've been through hell too.”

 

A small hand touched mine, offered its own sense of grounding. “I'm okay, Schu. They didn't win.”

 

No, but that sort of thing changes you, kid. “I know.”

 

“Schuldig?”

 

“What is it, kiddo?”

 

Nagi looked down, as if he couldn't look at my face as he said, “I don't mind if you sing along with the music.”

 

Non sequiturs had become my way of life. “Thanks, chibi. I'll try not to make your eardrums bleed.” I put in a well-worn disc and let it pull me in, shield me from my past, from Nagi's past. I had to concentrate on driving, I couldn't afford to get dragged back into my memories. One amazing thing about each of my teammates, they could all tell when I was getting into trouble, whether it was a lack of shielding or my own peculiar self-absorptive brooding. Nagi knew it was time to change the subject, before I drove off the road.

 

When we stopped for the night, I got Nagi bedded down in the back seat of the car and tilted my seat back across his legs. I wanted a cigarette. At least I knew that craving was my own; I was familiar enough with it over all these years to know if it was an impostor. The food cravings had been a bit bizarre, but I would rather have those than the mood swings. Hell, a telepath with patchy shields was worse than any joke about PMS or pregnancy! Then again, I had been feeling a little run-down lately. I laughed at myself, letting the absurdity play itself out in my mind. Wouldn't that just be hilarious? I'd have to go on a daytime talk show to find out who the culprit was.

 

“Schuldig, men can't get pregnant, and you're projecting very loudly.” Nagi sat up and looked at me with fatigue-rimmed eyes. “If you can't shut up, can you just go to sleep?”

 

“Sorry, kiddo. Guess my mind is a little over-worked lately.”

 

“It's probably just out of shape.”

 

“Cute. Real cute. You serious about letting me sleep first?”

 

Nagi sighed. “If I wasn't, I wouldn't have offered. Besides, you're the driver. You need your rest.”

 

“I could teach you how to drive,” I suggested. “That way we could share the load, and you could surprise Brad.”

 

“Shock him senseless is more like it, if you taught me.” Nagi smiled, nearly laughing. “I bet he wouldn't See it coming.”

 

I let the kid keep watch while I tried to sleep. It wasn't easy that night, probably because of where our conversation had gone earlier. When I did drift off, it was to uneasy dreams of a forest where the trees had claws: a demented Disney dreamscape where larger-than-life villains lay in wait for their chosen prey.

 

Deep within the forest lay a path, and the path led to massive iron gates. Beyond the gates…

 

Something grabbed me, and I flailed against it.

 

“Schuldig, wake up!”

 

Nagi's voice cut through the panic. His small hands gripped my arm, his eyes searched my face for recognition. “Schuldig, please wake up!”

 

I couldn't speak, I could only wave my hand at him and nod. I felt like I couldn't breathe. I'd been dreaming… “I'm okay, chibi,” I rasped. Then I realized I didn't know if he'd woken me because of my nightmare, or something else. “Are you all right?”

 

“I'm fine. You were yelling in your sleep,” Nagi said, barely audible. “I thought you were having a seizure, like Farfarello.” His voice broke on the name.

 

“No, kiddo, it was just a bad dream,” I told him, moving to see him better.

 

His eyes were bright and frightened. He dragged in a deep breath. “You're okay, though, right?”

 

“Yeah, I'm fine.” I reached out to his mind, as gently as I could. What I found there made my heart ache.

 

Nagi had never had a real childhood. The fears and betrayals of those years weighed heavy on him, probably always would. The team was as close to family as he would ever get. And too many times lately he'd seen a teammate suffer or collapse outright. He was terrified of being left alone, of losing the only home he had. Of losing Schwarz.

 

I put my seat up and clambered into the back to sit next to him. “Kiddo, we're going to get through this,” I said, reaching out to hold him the way I used to, when he barely knew my language and only came up to my waist. “Trust Crawford. He might not be able to tell us why, but I believe he does know what he's doing. It's frustrating, yeah, and I question a lot of it, but that's because I hate not knowing, not because I don't trust him. I trust him with my life.”

 

“Do you trust him with mine?” Nagi whispered, not looking at me.

 

I tilted his chin up and looked into his eyes, though he tried to pull away. “Yes, Nagi. I do.”

 

He leaned forward and clung to me like a little kid, holding fast to the only safety he knew. “I'm scared. He's scaring me, Schuldig. Worse than Far.”

 

“I know, kiddo. I'm scared too.” Too many times Brad had dropped little hints that had me chilled to the core, without any clear knowledge of their nature. I totally understood why Nagi would be frightened. “We're up against some nasty odds, and I know that Brad is doing everything in his power to stack them in our favor. We just have to hold on, and ride it out.”

 

“I hate this.”

 

Without another word, I eased us both down onto the back seat, Nagi lying almost on top of me. I scanned the area one more time, found nothing. We needed sleep, and we were running out of night. It was a little warm like this, but I'd held that kid when he was too small to complain about it, and damned if I was going to let him pull away now. I wrapped my arms around Nagi and held him close, breathing in the scent of him, remembering the good moments when he was just a child, and I was just his keeper. The time before we were a complete team.

 

The time before Esset devoured Nagi's remaining innocence and left me with this changeling in his place.

 

Amazingly, Nagi dozed off within minutes, his body relaxed and warm in the way that only exhausted children manage to pull off. I let the weight and the heat of him bear me down until sleep pulled me under, this time without dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

A/N

Your eyes they often lie and leave me feeling misunderstood

 

And a return to CXS Mystery. “Heart on My Sleeve” could be about Brad, or Nagi. Those are the two people best able to hold Schuldig hostage by his heart. He would do anything for them, or very nearly anything: he's hoping they won't ask him to do that.

 

Ever listen to Mozart's Don Giovanni? Can't you just imagine Schuldig banging away on the steering wheel, singing at the top of his lungs in a language he doesn't know? So can I. No wonder Nagi pulled the plug on that one.

 

Ben Stein, for those who may not know, is the actor who played the teacher in “Ferris Bueller's Day Off”, the one doing roll call: “Bueller… Bueller … Bueller …” He also does those Visine commercials (“dry, itchy eyes”) and at one time had his own game show (“Win Ben Stein's Money”). His whole shtick is a flat, monotone, deadpan presentation. Which is something Nagi excels at naturally.

 

As for the time jumps in the last two chapters… you know how “real life” sometimes sneaks up and bites you in the ass, and you catch yourself wondering where the hell the first half of the year vanished to? Schuldig is beginning to experience this…

 

 

Special Note:

 

Another note about my move to livejournal. This is in response to a question from Arileo, and probably others who just haven't asked it yet. Yes, I'm pulling out from MediaMiner and AdultFanFiction too, but not for the same reason as here.

 

I'm leaving this site due to their ratings and censorship policies: my stories just about beg to get banned, and that doesn't set well with the whole “unleash your imagination and free your soul” tagline. Also, it offends me greatly that other writers can wind up banned for minor infractions while my juggernaut of an NC17 epic lumbers on unscathed. It's not fair, it's not even-handed, and it's just not right. I don't want to take advantage of a situation like this while others are targeted.

 

The reason I'm pulling out from the other sites is simply that I was losing track of what was posted where, and I wasn't getting my review responses out to my own satisfaction. I'd write to people here, but I've ended up neglecting the folks at the other sites. Apparently one fic-journal and one website are enough for my frazzled little mind! (It's the “RL” job that's really eating my brain lately - perpetually short handed in a publication business is not a happy thing, especially when you're the dork who knows every part of the job and has to fill in for anyone who's off.)

 

I hope you all forgive me for the change of venue, but my sanity has to come first. I'm just grateful my muses haven't abandoned me through all the chaos, though I sometimes wish they'd let me take a day or two off! *sweatdrop*

 

GR

 

 

Poco-poco - You'll be glad to know, nothing blew up. *grin*

 

Eternal-Darkness - Gotta love those *squee* moments!

 

Shadowgirl - ch 68 - I managed to work myself into a case of double pneumonia once. Not pretty. Fever was fun, tho - air conditioner sang to me (hmm, maybe THAT'S where Far gets his fascination with those things…)

ch 67 - Glad you saved it, I was worried about ya with all those thunderstorms!

 

Arileo - I hope you understand my need to simplify. I've got enough chaos just writing these monster stories!

 

Tysoyo Kalli - You're so right about never taking things lightly with anyone from Rosenkreuz. I may have to do a blog or side story someday about “Brad's Diary”, and show the either/or visions he's been getting all through this.

I'm aiming for sad, happy, bitter-sweet, actually… We're not too close yet: have to get through Warsaw and Glühen first.

 

Eboni - Heh heh heh, good question, eh? Come by my livejournal, I'll post the transcript there (don't wanna upset the powers that be here at ff, you know).

 

StarPrincessMeesa - I must read that… You know, ever since my SchuMuse told me about the pancakes, I've been whining to YohjiDeranged to drive about half an hour (!) to the nearest IHOP…she keeps saying “no”. (I think that's her BradMuse talking…)

 

Mistress Of Anime - Thank you. My Schwarz is very much a family, with hopes and fears and dreams all tangled up among them. I'm glad it comes through in the writing.

 

May - Heh heh, yeah, I'm mean. And thank you; sometimes it's only their caring for each other that will move them along.