Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Khorakhane ❯ The Dead and the Soulless ( Prologue )

Title: Khorakhane (1)

Author: Twin kitties AKA Sardius and Lilla

Category: AU/ Angst/Romance/Hentai

Warnings: NC-17

Pairings: S=R, which is to say SxR and RxS, Yuushi/Ran

Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz belongs to Project Weiss and Koyasu Takehito. We are just very poor students, writing for fun.

(1) Khorakhane is Croatian and should mean: (made) to be wind. We got this title from the text of an Italian song, 'Khorakhané' (duh) that is in F. De Andre's album 'Anime salve'. No, I bet no one knows him… The song is good, very good. If you can get your hands on it listen to the woman-singing bit at the end.

Other inspiration was found in Savatage's song 'Believe'.

Author's Note: OK, time for some additional warnings.

Beware this is a yaoi story and in future chapters there will be lemons. So if you are too young or don't like same sex relationships, don't read!

This fic started out one late night for Sardius and one early afternoon for Lilla when we were talking online and decided…. hey let's write a fic together! So here it is guys. If the plot is a bit strange, don't worry…it's meant to be that way. Enjoy and please let us know what you think!

Many thanks to Nekojita for the beta reading!

RAN

The wind blew gently inside the room; a soft chime could be heard outside the window as a young man sat on the bed gazing out at the afternoon sunlight. No other sound was heard except the occasional beep of the medical equipment. A pale hand reached out to gently touch a sleeping girl that lay snuggled in the chair.

The girl did not stir as the young man ran his fingers through her silky chocolate locks, his amethyst eyes filled with a tinge of sadness, a sigh escaping from his pink lips. Another day almost gone, how many more days were left?

Ran continued looking down at his beloved imouto Aya, his heart aching with pain as he wondered what would happen to the girl once he was gone. Of course, Ran knew Aya was trying to keep up a brave front, telling him each day that he was getting better and better, and that, sooner or later, Ran could go back to college and have a normal life once again …but…the young man already knew…

He wouldn't live for much longer.

He had been ill ever since he was a child, with the weak heart inherited from his fragile mother. An illness which, Ran knew, would have him leaving the world one day, just as his mother had done, not so long ago, leaving him to look after Aya chan. But chances being what they were, as Fate always loves to play around with people's lives, Ran was sure he would soon be following in his mother's footstep and leaving his imouto behind.

And he hated this weakness of his.

He had always wanted to be normal, to play around with his friends, to talk about the latest electronics on the market, to go out and be like everyone else. But, he would always have to return to the hospital, to get further treatment. To lie down on the bed looking towards the same white ceiling all the time, wishing his days would end faster.

"Ran?"

The young man looked down and saw a pair of brown eyes looking up at him in concern and smiled. He didn't want to worry his imouto any further; after all, he had saved enough money, when he was still able to work, to ensure that Aya could manage to look after herself till she was old enough to find her own financial support.

"I'm okay. You should go home, visiting hours are almost over."

"But…I want to stay here with you some more…really I'm not that tired." Aya tried to stifle her yawn and blushed when Ran raised an eyebrow at her.

"Well…maybe I am a bit tired. All right but I will see you first thing after I finish school tomorrow, okay?" Without further ado, the brunette walked over to Ran and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him into an embrace.

Ran accepted the touch; Aya did that all the time. It was as if she also knew that he would die sooner or later and wanted to make every visit count, as if it were to be the last. Ran did not know when he would die but each day he seemed to be getting weaker by the minute. Already it took a lot of energy for him to sit up and remain awake every time his imouto would visit him.

After a moment of silence, reigning while the two siblings gave comfort to each other, Aya let her arms fall down and smiled sweetly at her brother. "I'll bring you some cakes tomorrow. Rei-chan said she was going to teach me how to make them tonight. I promise to leave you some."

Ran tried his best to smile but already he could feel another seizure coming. "Thank you. Have fun then and be careful."

Aya leaned over and kissed the young man lightly on the forehead. "You too. Sleep well."

"Hai."

Then the brunette picked up her belongings and left the room, the door shutting quietly behind her.

Ran gasped and tightly clutched his chest, beads of sweats forming on his forehead. He hated having a seizure; it always made him feel so weak afterwards. Vision blurred, the redhead laid back on his bed, his breathing coming in short quick gasps as he closed his eyes tightly, his teeth biting hard on his lips.

It hurts. God it hurts so much.

Hands shaking, Ran felt the pain slowly fade away and sighed in relief. It wasn't that bad today, usually he would have to call the nurses, but today…. today it wasn't that painful.

Body still trembling, Ran closed his eyes and welcomed the darkness that enveloped him. It was the only place in this world, where he no longer felt any pain.

* * * * * * *

SCHULDIG

I am the guilty one and yet I feel no guilt. Nor love, nor hatred, nor any of the feelings that humans are prey to. I… never… have?

I have taken Guilt as my name. But I will never know what my name is. Feelings… they are for the weak I was told, in a lesson of long ago, but could they not be strength too? How will I ever know if I never experience them? I need to see for myself what this is all about

I don't know. At times I think I might have known how to feel a long time ago, before the empty darkness that claimed all the memories of my life from my early childhood. Before all those voices started to come into my mind, taking 'things' with them, tearing away pieces of who I was till I could no longer remember. Till I was an empty shell, a wind chime, relaying only on the sound and yet not understanding it. Because no matter how much a wind chime can sound like a human voice it is still an object, a shade of life, soulless. An effect to a cause.

I can read minds. No one is safe from my piercing gaze. I see the corruption in the heart of the father looking lustfully at his daughter and can tell how the nice unassuming salary man in truth is but a monster, waiting to go out and carve into the bodies of defenceless boys the kanji of the name of his beloved in high school. The one who killed himself in shame after they were found out.

But I digress, and you will wonder why I am so 'fascinated' by these dreadful people. When indeed I am not. For to be fascinated, I would have to feel *something* for them. No I do not have anything stirring in the dead organ that is my heart, not what you call horror nor pity.

I have felt those in your hearts, and know their flavour. I have felt every shade the human heart can experience through the minds of you all, little ants crawling on the earth. Yes, *you* have been used too in my research. You who are dreaming of me and will forget me once the morning is here.

Why do I enter your mind, you wonder? Because I can't understand and you can. You… feel.

You see, it is easy to understand. You all 'intrigue' me because you act much as I do but where for me it is orders and lack of care, for you it is something else that casts you into the abysses of depravity. Who is the monster, you or I? Who is the one really bearing the guilt?

You feel something inside and that is what makes you so dangerous and yet so fallible. I was created as the perfect killer, feeling no remorse, shedding no tears for the lives I take; feeling… nothing.

Never will I know the agony that that serial killer, Araya, feels once those blue-eyed boys are dead at his feet. The grip of guilt, if it is indeed guilt, which makes him cry out as he did for his beloved, "Mamoru!! I didn't kill you, I didn't mean to, I love you." And the funny thing- is the man did mean to hurt every single one of them but a part of him refuses to believe it.

Ridiculous! Does he even know what he is feeling? I don't think that he does. But then neither do I. As fascinating as the study of this thing that is denied to me, is, I have never experienced it. And as a good assassin knows, research means understanding your prey and where feelings are involved I don't know squat.

My thoughts have managed to make a rueful smile appear on my face. I can feel it stretching the muscles close to the corners of my mouth. They tense almost painfully but then most of the time I don't allow myself to even break into this, the only expression ever seen on my face. That mocking smirk that seems to rile everyone around me. If only they could understand that I am not mocking them, for I cannot. To mock someone I would need to find him or her funny and 'amusement' too is something that was taken away from me.

Did you ever notice how many words in all languages go into describing feelings? And how you keep referring to them? Like, hate, love are just the best known; what about appreciation, enjoyment, disapproval, compassion… You think in terms of them unconsciously and I find it so difficult to use them, even with your minds overlapping my consciousness. It is funny, really, how you could confuse me, if I hadn't decided long ago that you do not make sense, for what one terms love is hate to another, as ecstasy can become torment and so on and so forth.

Yes I 'like' to think that I wasn't born this way, that there was a time when I was human and just like everybody else. You got a problem with that? Frankly put, I do not. Maybe I was born this way and the black hands in my head are but a fantasy. It makes no difference to me whatsoever… And again, at times when I think of the hands I can feel a stirring of something within me half forgotten, half buried 'crying out'. Yes, I think that is the word you would use.

It is funny for I do not know how to describe it and haven't ever been able to pinpoint it in anyone. Maybe because it isn't a feeling but just some odd part of my psyche, something that just doesn't conform to the logic order I see as 'myself', through the chaos of the thoughts assaulting me.

I never have been able to find in another's heart that shiver of intensity that echoes within me until now. I brushed his mind and felt it. Yes, his mind. He is alone, while in the middle of a crowd of well meaning people. Alone as only the dying can be, those waiting for death and freaks like me.

I have waited for this tempest within him to grow in size to the point where his is the only voice I know and his feelings the only ones that wash, almost comprehensible for once, over me.

I 'want'; yes a part of me wants something for once, those feelings for myself. I had to wait for this, the payment, for what I will take, to fall into my hands. I may be the evil, as only indifference truly is, for it has no bearing with humanity and is either demonic or godlike; but I believe in paying my debts. Something about giving the Devil his dues?

But now there is no more time, and all is ready. I shall act.

I open up the window going out onto the fifth floor balcony of the apartment complex I live in and, fingering distractedly the necklace in my pocket, I let myself fall. With catlike grace I land perfectly on the pavement and make my way to where he lays. My unconventional exit is undetected by all and sundry on the road, as in the building I just quitted, with just a bare nudge of my power.

Much in the same fashion I enter the hospital and make my way to his room. He is sleeping, if this lack of conscious thought can even be called sleeping. Uncaring of the hurt waiting for him I give his mind a not too subtle nudge to make him 'wake.'

His eyes open, the colour of crushed orchids, or is it more like the sky just before the sun sets? They throw me off, those eyes. I have watched them through a sister's worried gaze looking for reassurances that I, she, wouldn't be left alone, but I still wasn't prepared.

It doesn't matter. I have come for one thing and one thing only. He will strike the deal and he will live on. How, I do not know, and I don't care enough to wonder about that. That he will means that my part of the bargain will be fulfilled and that is all that 'matters' to me. If he finds himself short changed then he will have no one to blame but himself.

I can feel his fevered mind wondering about me. Thinking that I must be a hallucination, at the same time fearing that I might not be, and that I could be here to help him cross the Great Divide…

Funny, I come here as a demon of life and he takes me for an angel of death. Or rather it would be funny if I could go further than an ironic academic consideration.

Time to say my lines.

"What is your heart's desire?" I ask indifferently.

Something passes in his violet orbs and I can feel the echo growing stronger… heartbreaking. Pure, unadulterated… Guilt? The cry, which echoes still in my soul.

Then almost before I can catch my mental footing again, at the pain lancing through me, from my stomach up till my heart aches and twists as his does, he speaks. "Life," he says, but I hear the unspoken part too "for Aya-chan…"

TBC~~~
Like it? Love it? Give us some comments! Feed us with sweets and we promise to give you more chapters! YAY! Btw, Lilla wrote most of this. She wrote Schu and I wrote Ran. And look at all the hard work she put it! Amazing! Thanks for reading!

Well what can I say? Hate mail is mine! LOL. Well, hope there won't be any of that, but just in case… you know what to do with it. One last thing, then you can go and review, I did not write most of this, half at most. And Sardius' parts are way cooler, but I will do better! Once again thank you for reading!