Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Madness is Red ❯ Night ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two


The late afternoon was slowly consumed by the past, fading to a white blur of words and injections and locked doors. After their one, bizarre conversation, Aya had been silent; he laid on his bed, curled towards the wall, and made no reply to any of Schuldig’s queries. The latter soon tired of the senseless game and flopped back onto his own bed to stare at the ceiling as the darkness fell around them, the slanting light slipping from the screened window as the asylum fell into its own surreal version of night.

He dozed, lightly and briefly, but snapped awake as someone screamed. The move had been instinctual, and he was almost surprised to find himself crouching on the floor, heart racing, hand reaching for a boot knife that was no longer there. Forcing himself to relax, Schuldig turned to find Aya sitting stiffly in his bed, covers thrown back and hand pressed into the hard mattress as if he might pounce forth.

//Did you scream?//

Aya’s wide eyes jerked to him, glaring even in the dim moonlight.

“Don’t do that,” he hissed.

“What?”

Aya pointed to his head, but it still took Schuldig a minute to realize what he had done precisely.

“Sorry,” he shrugged, laughing a little as he climbed back into his bed and drew up the stiff sheets. He thought for a second, then shucked his white sweatshirt onto the floor before settling to lean on one elbow and examine Aya. He was about to repeat his question when the scream came again, high pitched and terrified. It was close, but not in their room.

Then it came again. Schuldig watched Aya turn and scoot into the corner of his bed, pressing his back to the wall and his right side to the headboard. He was facing Schuldig’s bed, but his eyes were elsewhere as he drew his knees towards his chest and held them there with trembling hands.

The screams continued, loud and female, harsh.

“God. It sounds like someone’s killing her!”

“It’s me,” Aya whispered, eyes wide but unseeing. Clutching his head with both hands, he pulled hard at his hair as his voice became a low whine, “It’s me. It’s me. Every night I kill her. I can’t make it stop. I don’t want the screams. I–”

“Stop it!” Schuldig demanded; he couldn’t take the insistent emotional pain from the shrieking woman and the dark guilt radiating off of Aya, not simultaneously. His shields were strong, but not strong enough to block out dual assaults of insanity in the middle of the fucking night.

“I can’t. I can’t stop it. It’s on me; she’s dead, and it’s on me and I can’t see it because it’s not red here. He’ll come and take it off. Not here. He can’t get here. I didn’t mean to!” Pale fingers were pulling so hard at his hair that Schuldig was sure it would come out at the roots. Quickly he came to Aya’s bed, kneeling beside him and trying to coax the trembling hands from the scarlet locks. They relaxed a little.

And the woman screamed again.

“Shit,” Schuldig swore. Summoning strength he wasn’t sure he had at the moment, he sent a vague message of sleep to the screaming banshee that was their neighbor; then he started again with Aya. He reached for the pale hands, gently rubbing the backs and fingers, trying to get them loose. “Let go, come on.”

He really was like a kitten, a terrified, beaten one, perhaps, scared to trust and slow to come out of his own little world, not matter how terrible.

But the hands let go, and Schuldig took them between his own.

“How often does that happen?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Every night.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

This wasn’t the happy, babbling Aya of the afternoon; he was tired and trembling. No wonder, though, with screams breaking up the night. And to an assassin! It would drive anyone crazy, memories being thrust at them like that. How stupid! Schuldig wondered how crazy Abyssinian really was, and how much was due to the swift alteration of emptiness and intensity of this place. Not to mention the sleep deprivation.

“Aya?”

Violet eyes regarded him warily. It wasn’t really the time for an in-depth discussion of symptoms.

“Try to sleep.”

Laying the younger man down, Schuldig drug the white covers up over his shoulders and returned to his own bed. The sheets were tangled, and it took a few seconds to sort himself out. By the time he laid down on his side to look at Aya, the assassin was fast asleep.

~tbc~

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