Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Mind Games and Coffee ❯ Chapter 13 ( Chapter 13 )

Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz is not mine.  All its characters and affiliates are also not mine.  Nothing involving Weiss Kreuz is mine.  Sadly this is true.

 

Author's Notes: *Gasp* Solaras attempts to explain the mysterious starry spacey room thing.

 

This chapter is dedicated to livejournal's lauandwhose kind recommendation of my humble little story made my day, and also gave me the kick in the rear I needed to finish this chapter.

 

Review Responses:

 

darkephoenix- Hey, it didn't take a year. Does that earn me brownie points? Or at least less poking of Solaras voodoo dolls? Just remember, I will always return….eventually.

 

 

~telepathy~ aka communicating as in intentionally projecting

/thoughts/ aka Schuldig reading someone's mind as in not intentionally projecting (Schuldig is eavesdropping)

 

German Words:

 

Großmutter - Grandmother

Wenn ich Gott finde, werde ich es dir erzählen. - If I find God, I will tell you.

Komm und spiel. - Come and play.

Ja - Yes

Immer - Always

Huren - whores/harlots

Arschloch - asshole

Scheiße - shit

 

 

Chapter Thirteen:

 

 

/Omi's real name is Takatori Mamoru./

 

Schuldig could still hear his own voice circling around in Takatori's girl-spawn's head. Round and round it went, and when it stopped, Schuldig stirred it up again. Oka's mind writhed with turmoil; she wanted so badly to disbelieve all that she had been told. One strand of thoughts denied Omi as her brother, while the other condemned her love for her own blood. Schuldig lay stretched out on the living room couch, head tilted back over the arm rest, while he absorbed every drop of confusion, angst, and self recrimination. Idly he poked a memory of Omi, and watched colors surge behind his closed eyelids: pinks and yellows quickly twisting to reds and blacks. He wet his lips. Other people's pain always tasted sweet. Schuldig opened his eyes and found the yellow still there.

 

“You look high,” said Farfarello. The pale man leaned over the prostrate Schuldig, almost nose to nose, and sniffed him. “You don't smell high. Where have you gone? Has your mind heard God?”

 

“Wenn ich Gott finde, werde ich es dir erzählen.”

 

“What will you say to God?”

 

“Komm und spiel.”

 

“Games with God?”

 

“Ja.”

 

“Are you playing games now?” Farfarello asked and a lazy smirk twisted Schuldig's mouth.

 

“Immer.”

 

“Who with?”

 

“Weiss.”

 

“Do you bring them pain, Mastermind? Will you paint their world with red? Will you make them scream to God?”

 

“Do you want to know my Dante's demon? Do you want to know what it's like to control minds; to taste thoughts?” Schuldig arched his neck against the arm rest, his mouth open, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Sweet, so very sweet, like honey. Today everything is honey.” Schuldig focused his eyes on Farfarello, and let Oka's mind drift to the back of his; still monitored but no longer consumed. “Would you like to play, Farfarello, as I do; rend people from the inside?

 

“You come and play with me; it seems only fair that I come and play with you,” Farfarello replied. “Show me, Guilty One, what it's like to hear like God.”

 

“Come,” Schuldig said, as his mind brushed Farfarello's, “first we need Nagi. There's something I need him to do.”

 

Schuldig closed his eyes, and let his mind reach across the apartment. He found Nagi sitting in front of his computer, and poked into the Japanese boy's head. Briefly he was disoriented by the ordered strings of 0s and 1s. Computer code streamed around Schuldig; it blinked and combined to form images: computer screens, Nagi's room, Tot, Schwarz, the latest anime. Schuldig caught hold of a strand of code and from it shaped a door colored with space and stars.

 

~Come and play,~ he taunted and left the door open. He felt Nagi's start at the sudden contact and his awareness of the door. Nagi's frustrated sigh rippled over his consciousness, like wind over a pond.

 

Schuldig opened a similar door for Farfarello and himself, and one by one they appeared in a spacial void occupied by themselves and those things closest to their physical forms: their clothes, Nagi's computer (desk and chair), and the living room couch. In this place set between their minds, Schwarz were at their most secure; even from the watchful eyes of Estet. Anchored by Crawford's mind and protected by his shields, the mental space was the closest Schuldig could get to being inside Brad's head. A small piece of each member of Schwarz resided deep in Brad's mind, linked and held together by strands of Schuldig's own power; familiar pathways that Schuldig could access to bring them all together.

 

The plans for the void had been set early in Schuldig's and Crawford's collaboration. Still bound to the halls of Rosenkreuz, the two began to stretch the limits of their abilities far beyond the expectations of their superiors. Schuldig remembered with perfect clarity the first time he had been drawn within Crawford's mind; a secondary ability that Schuldig helped him to perfect. Crawford's shields, that mental barrier that thwarted even the greatest telepaths, could be just as impenetrable from within as out. Inside Brad's mind had been ordered chaos that only a precognitive could begin to understand. The future spread before Schuldig in all directions, the lines twisting, overlapping, merging, and unmerging; like some colossal ever-changing roadmap. Schuldig remembered a feeling like what, he assumed, drowning must be like. Ripped and tossed in all directions, Schuldig had been at the mercy of the flow, and then there was a pull, the future fell away, and all was silence; silence like he remembered and dreamed of since he was four years old. Schuldig's mental image had stood hand in hand with Brad's in the calm and ordered center of Brad's mind, the eye of the storm, and all around them time flowed in its haphazard and undecided course.

 

From time to time, when the world lulled into quiet and Schuldig' thoughts were his own, he wondered if Crawford knew (planned) what he had given Schuldig that day; wondered if he knew that having tasted silence again, Schuldig would follow Brad anywhere. The telepath had seen the scope of Crawford's power, far underestimated by Estet, and had momentarily been awed, but it was the promise of silence, the dampening effect of those shields, that held him captivated. Crawford was Schuldig's salvation; the key to his continued sanity, and even if Brad hadn't realized it that day when his mind opened to the telepath, Schuldig was sure he was aware now. When Schuldig's thoughts were his own, sometimes he wondered what would happen when Crawford got what he wanted (whatever that may truly be), when the future was ordered to Brad's liking. Would he still have a place beside the Oracle? Schuldig knew what everyone wanted, where he stood with everyone, except the one mind that mattered, Brad.

 

“What do you want Schuldig?” asked a disgruntled Nagi. “I was in the middle of something.”

 

“Your internet huren can wait. We are going to play a game with Weiss, and I need you to do some photo manipulation.”

“Some of us have actual work to do Schuldig, and can't laze about on the couch all day. And I wasn't looking at porn! Though if you would actually learn more about computers, then maybe you could clear out the underside of your bed.”

“Ah, but then I wouldn't have anything to prop the bed up with. Besides the real thing is much better,” Schuldig said and then draped himself along the back of Nagi's chair, his arms wrapping around the boy's shoulders. “Want me to show you just how cold your computer is,” Schuldig hissed into Nagi's ear.

“Ick, get off!” Nagi screeched, and Schuldig laughed against the palm pushing his head back.

“How you spurn me Nagi,” Schuldig sighed with mock defeat.

“You and whatever you're carrying.”

“Hey, I am perfectly healthy!”

“And how about your hundreds of partners?”

“I have not slept with that many people!” Schuldig protested.

“Everyone knows that when you have sex you're sleeping with everyone they've been with,” Nagi said matter-of-factly.

“I knew Crawford should have taken you out of school before they pushed the repression of Sex Ed on you,” groaned Schuldig.

“For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,”* Farfarello added.

“Eh?”

“God says you're a whore,” supplied Nagi.

“Obviously I'm not appreciated here,” Schuldig sniffed, “maybe I won't let you guys play in my little game after all.”

“You are very appreciated,” said Farfarello, “your whoring hurts God.”

“Arschloch.”

 

* * * * * *

 

Oka struggled futilely against her bonds in the backseat of Schuldig's car. The rustling wisp-wisp of her clothes against the upholstery told Schuldig his captive was awake. Her voice was muffled, but her mind screamed. Sitting in the front seat Schuldig allowed himself to drift among her thoughts; buoyed by their intensity above the constant thrum of the city. Pain danced a tangy yellow-green across her thoughts. The rope pulled tight against the thin skin of her wrist, cut slightly further into her flesh with every movement. Panic flitted about in bursts of orange. Schuldig could see himself in her mind: the back of his head resting against the driver's seat, the edge of green coat, and his face in the rear-view mirror. His eyes moved restlessly under closed lids, while his mouth parted slightly to allow his tongue to run along his bottom lip. He tasted honey. Fear clogged her mind in brilliant cloying amber.

The evening grew late, but the people out searching for their night's entertainment didn't think twice (or even once) about the red car parked illegally along the side of the street in front of the hardware store. Across the city, Weiss scurried about in confusion and suspicion. Schuldig's game was coming to the climax, and he wondered how far it could be pushed. Would the Weiss kittens turn on one another? Anticipation, too, could be sweet.

A noise from outside himself, from outside his mind, and the honeyed thoughts of Oka and Weiss roused Schuldig back to the world around him. A bag rustled and the passenger car door opened, and a familiar red wind beat against his awareness, like a storm that had been seen in the distance arriving in full. Schuldig slit his eyes open; the blue irises glowing beneath low hanging lids.

“Should I be taking your keys, and saying, `friends don't let friends drive dunk,'” asked Farfarello in an amused tone; a smirk lifting his lips as he glanced in the backseat. He settled himself in the passenger seat, and placed a plastic bag at his feat.

“Like I'd let you drive my car,” said Schuldig, “I didn't think they offered Driver's Ed in the loony bin.”

“It'd be hard to hold the wheel in a straitjacket.”

“Should be hard to hold a knife too,” jeered Schuldig, as he righted himself and turned the keys in the ignition. “Did you enjoy your shopping? As you can see,” he said with a nod to the back, “I got everything on my grocery list.” Farfarello nodded and nudged the bag with his foot. Inside Schuldig could make out spools of wire and some sort of hand held torch. “Metalworking?”

“Weapons customization,” replied Farfarello. Schuldig laughed, and Oka's fear spiked. The telepath's eyes fluttered shut.

“Honey, Farfarello, today is all about honey.”

“Crawford said to watch for bees,” the Irishman said with a sinister smile and a sideways glance to his German companion.

“Then let's smoke them out.” Schuldig shifted the car into gear and hit the gas. The tires squealed a high pitch sound, and the car jolted down the road. There was more rope in the trunk and a park full of trees ahead. Already swooning couples and dog walkers felt the urge to be somewhere else.

 

* * * * * *

 

Brad Crawford saw the girl die a hundred times, a hundred different ways. In some visions Oka lived to be an old woman, in some she died young, and in one particularly bloody vision she crossed paths with a serial killer yet to exist. Choice, free will, action and reaction; the future could change with a single decision. One morning a man decides to try a different coffee shop and interrupts a robbery. One night a lady doesn't wait to be walked to her car, and she gets assaulted in the parking garage. No one saw the future, and anyone who said differently lied. There were endless possible futures, endless possibilities. With every choice, the future changed. With every step forward, a moment in time would clear. A single decision made destroyed a hundred other possibilities. Every pivotal action further clarified the timeline. Inside Crawford's mind the future flowed in a continuous stream of images. Words and sounds appeared and disappeared: a snatch of conversation, a newspaper article, screams, and songs. Oka always died; the timing just changed.

Crawford watched as possibilities fell away; their paths ended with every tick of the clock: Schuldig's move here, Weiss's counter there, and Farfarello. Schuldig set the game, but Farfarello would take the match. Farfarello's bloodlust, barely contained by his veil of sanity, combined with Schuldig's dangerously whimsical nature almost always resulted in death. Oka would die because Schuldig was bored; bored and angry at Brad. Oka would die because Farfarello's demons demanded blood; blood to wash away the blood of the family his conscious mind pushed from thought. Oka would die because it would drive Takatori to careless madness; madness that would drive Estet's support away. Oka would die because of Brad Crawford; Brad Crawford who manipulated the endless stream of possibilities to obtain the future he sought. Crawford could not see the future, but that would not stop him from creating it.

In the dim light of his office, Brad opened his eyes. The computer light glinted off the pair of glasses sitting on the desk. The only remaining possibility glimmered gold in his mind. For the next few minutes the future of a small group of people, in a park several miles away, came into focus. The events that would come to pass in the days to come adjusted around the facts taking place. Brad could see Schuldig move to reload, could see Farfarello move to cover him, and Weiss move to flank them. He could see the storm brewing in Farfarello's yellow eye. If he studied the images enough, he could probably even pinpoint the moment when Farfarello's thoughts bled into Schuldig's; when Schuldig knew that Oka's death was emanate, but he carried too much of Farfarello in his head to care. Oka would die, so that Takatori would die. Once the leash was off, and Estet gave Schwarz downtime while the Elders plotted, Schwarz would make their move. Brad Crawford decided long before Rosenkreuz came for him, that he would not be controlled, and by necessity neither would Schwarz.

Brad closed his eyes, and saw realization light upon Schuldig's face. He had followed Crawford for many years. Schuldig had given Brad his trust, even though the telepath could not get inside his mind, and from Schuldig it had been a hard won thing. Schuldig would not leave Schwarz, Brad knew for certain, as there was no where else to go. If threat of Estet didn't insure that, then Brad himself did. Schuldig needed the dampening effect of Crawford's mind. Rosenkreuz never thought Schuldig would live this long, much less with his sanity relatively intact. Brad knew he was the reason Schuldig was still alive, and Schuldig knew it as well. Schwarz were the tools Crawford had gathered to create his future; a future that had, without his conscious consent, stopped seeing them as dispensable. Tools had to be used, however, or there would be no freedom for any of them. Schuldig would never leave Crawford, Brad was sure, but he did wonder if Schuldig would forgive him; moreover, he wondered why and when he had started to care? When had he decided not to face the future alone?

 

* * * * * *

 

The shock and pain ripping through Oka's mind hit Schuldig, before he even registered the sound of the gunshot. The red haze that resonated with Farfarello's mind lifted from Schuldig's thoughts, as even the Berserker recognized the folly in this particular action. Blackness seeped through Oka's thoughts; her last hopes and regrets choked under the smothering weight of oblivion. Schuldig pulled away from where he had been entangled in her thoughts for the last several days. He pushed and strained his little existing shielding to the forefront, in order to sever the link and block her mind before her death dragged him too far down. The last thoughts of a dying mind could be like the finest wine, but only when he was prepared to resist the shutting down of the brain. The colors of Oka's mind grayed; the firing of the synapses slowed. Thoughts of Omi filtered through, and then Schuldig could perceive no more. All his defenses were thrown against the death of her mind, and already the rest of the world (or what seemed like it) started barging in.

Farfarello grabbed him by the elbow, and dragged him in the direction of the car. The contact helped Schuldig to focus. The telepath resettled his mind as best he could. He sought out the minds of Weiss, but found them remaining near the emptiness that had been Oka. Through their eyes, he saw the girl's body. He saw the dead daughter of Takatori. Their boss's favorite child murdered.

Takatori is going to hurt you, and I have to let him.

“Scheiße!”

 

 

End Chapter

 

End Notes: I know some of you have been wondering, so I'll tell you that Großmutter will probably return in either ch. 15 or 16. Hope to return soon with chapter 14. Until then thanks for stopping by.

 

Solaras

 

*Bible, King James Version. Galatians 6.8