Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Painting You Gold ❯ 10 South ( Chapter 10 )

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Disclaimer: I don't own Schu and his friends; that's for Tsuchiya-sensei and Koyappi/Project Weiß/TV Tokyo to work out. Or not.

Warning: This fic in its entirety involves explicitly implicit yaoi (shounen ai) in conjunction with character death, feelings, nonconsensual sex, original characters, shota, soap operatic/supernatural-type twists, spoilers, unpardoned French, Weiß, and yakuza. Squick factor is probably obvious here. ;)

Post-it: As always, thanks for your time.

/…/ = communicative thoughts and the like
[…] = memories, stuff remembered, and the like

Painting You Gold

By Koyuki Aode

10 ~ South

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Now, as you can imagine, I'm not a great believer in love-at-first-sight, but there is the existence of irrepressible desire or infatuation. It's so greatly popular; the thought of it gives me a migraine. But the minute Crawford managed to glimpse the short (read: positively tiny) quiet Japanese kid when we walked into the room that day was the minute something changed for him. He felt it, and I knew it - though the very concept was still a shady, disconcerted feeling even I couldn't pinpoint. Later, I would discover the reason. With my every iota of cockiness, I managed to wander over to the area around him as Farf and Crawford respectively poked and prodded all the new Estet transfers.

Nagi, as I would learn he was called from his cute little ID tag, was staring at me full on with those huge eyes. He was neither afraid nor excited; he wasn't feeling much of anything at all to tell the truth. He was curious though. I liked that.

Crawford's voice popped into my head suddenly, causing me to jump. /What color are those eyes? I can barely tell from here./ He was making his way to us, with Farf not too far behind.

I recomposed my air of supremacy and looked down at Nagi. He quirked an eyebrow back at me, his mouth a calm straight line.

/Blue. Lots of blue, on the pale side./

"What do you want with me?" Nagi asked, mechanically pushing each word through his lips, "I'm new here and I don't know anything." Oh that old thing. I snorted when he said it, that stupid mantra that the 'officials' seem to like drilling into our brains when they think we're worthless. They only seem to say it to the powerful ones. But he already knew that - that he was powerful. I felt a great calmness in him, coinciding with his apathy. He felt he could handle anything. His body seemed very thin and fragile, which held some semblance to his psyche, I imagined, beneath its shell.

"I like your mind," I whispered as I leaned forward threateningly. "It's something I can play with."

He continued staring at me. Memories I couldn't quite focus on flashed in his mind, but he maintained his stance. Another point for him.

/You haven't scared him yet./ Crawford thought to me, as he sidled up to us.

/I know. I like him already./

Crawford's glasses slid down his nose as he looked down to address Nagi. "How old are you?"

"Twelve." His mouth barely moved as he spoke in his low, monotonous voice. Speaking seemed some great hard task for him.

/Geez, that's about half your life./

/Is he lying?/

/I can't tell. He's got a pretty strong barrier; I'll need more verbal communication with him before I can peel it away./

"What's your ability?" Farf asked as he came up behind me.

"Telekinesis."

"And what do you do with that?" Crawford asked nonchalantly, pushing his frames up.

Nagi blinked up at Crawford, tossing his head a bit to keep the hair out of his eyes as he pushed his shoulders back confidently. "I break things." It was then I sensed the tight, constricting force of his vulnerability, vulnerability he'd barely managed to finish his struggle with as a boy. Had he been normal, he might have been more proud of himself - he might have smiled.

/I like him./ Farf thought to me immediately. /Are we going to keep him?/

It seemed to be set from the beginning. He didn't quite "fit in" that well with us, but there was no socializing to do. We co-existed, and the relationship worked.

Now I'd taken him a step further.

* * *

"Hey… HEY."

A small hand grabbed my arm, and another lay flat against my ribs, roughly jarring me awake. "What is it?" I mumbled, cracking my eyes open. Everything, including the boy at my bed, was slightly blurred.

"Is that German or something?"

"Yeah." I changed my mental mode to English and blinked a few times, with no effect. "But you know that… Nagi?" His outline was familiar, but his voice sounded off, as if broadcasted from some far distance over a phone line. There was also a tint of uncharted worry.

"… Ok." He sat on the bed with great effort. Except he didn't. Because when he did so, the bed did not shift under his weight. The blankets did not wrinkle, and there was no sound from the springs. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here?"

"Yes."

"This is my room," I said a little loudly. What on earth was wrong with my eyes?!

"No it's not," he immediately protested, "It's his room."

"Farf's room?"

"… What are you doing here? No, even better, what am I doing here?"

"What's going on? Where's Crawford?"

The room turned cold. I blinked again, yet nothing would take solid form. "Who?" Nagi's voice was even farther now, and he was taking the greatest effort to whisper. "Crawford- Who?"

"Crawford. Brad. You know, the man who--"

Nagi jumped to his feet. "-What is this place?!"

"Calm down!" I grabbed for him, not knowing what to expect. My hand clasped onto his shoulder, which shook violently. It wasn't until this that I noticed we weren't in the room anymore, but a well-furnished room, like an office or a bank. Everything around me was silent, my own breathing the only noise, though the people in the room had screams in their blurred expressions.

The place smelled like America.

I turned as Nagi ran to grab a smaller boy, who clutched at his head. "NO!" The child's horrified cries unlocked the event of the room. "OH MY GOD! NO!"

Like a delayed reaction, I heard a crash of glass and several guns went off behind me. They only passed through me, however, and it was Nagi whose blood filled the air. He dropped to the floor.

"A dream, then," I mused as I crouched over him. "Crawford's?... Nagi's?"

My vision had cleared. Nagi's blood, his face, and the tears he shed were now very clear. His eyes were blank.

But still his voice sounded, now from a deep corner of the planet:

"It isn't supposed to be like this."

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The pain of my head against the floor woke me. "Ow."

Farf walked in, holding his latest block of wood. "Morning," he said, in a rather chipper mood. He paused in walking. "Why are you on the floor?"

I climbed back onto the bed, muttering, "Dodging bullets…"

"What?"

"Dream. Nightmare. Something like that."

"Might've been Nagi's."

"Figured that." I went over to the dresser and shoved my hand into the first drawer.

"Not there," Farf said nonchalantly just as my hand closed over a thin, foreign box. I pulled it out.

"Nicotine gum?!" I burst out, not bothering to mask my disgust. "I told you I can't stand the shit."

"The faster you get off it, the faster you can get rid of it."

"I would say that I hate you, but I've got this policy about lying."

"Yeah, what's that deal?" Farf asked jokingly. He knew about my paranoia. Once you get to sense these things in people, you can't help wondering what they sense about you.

I went to the closet and dug a pack of real gum from a jacket. "Here," I nodded to to his knives, "Hand me one of those."

"What are you trying to do?" he asked warily, handing me a small blade.

I held up a piece of the nicotine gum and a piece of the normal gum. "See these?" He nodded. I proceeded to cut the tiniest, visible piece of nicotine gum off, and held it up. "Hm?" He nodded again. I mashed the small bit into the normal piece of gum and popped it into my mouth. "There. Magic."

"… You need some serious help," he muttered, rubbing the bump on my head. "He's holed himself up in the bathroom, Nagi. Crawford's tryin' to get him out, but he won't budge. Broke a window too, before he woke."

"Oh." I felt my face twist as the nicotine portion hit my tongue. "Awful," I groaned, "Kiss me and make it better." He did so.

"How's that? Mm. Original bubblegum."

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Crawford, with his hands against the door and his head slightly bowed, looked like he was trying to ask the bathroom to wear his ring.

As much as I had a hand in unraveling this part of him, a part of me missed the other part of him that Did Not Care. Or at least, Did Not Show It (As Much). It was like that science experiment in grade school when you were told to float a needle on a dishful of water, and to everyone's surprise, it worked.

Crawford's mask was strong enough to handle a certain amount of emotion; this, this was trying to float a penny on that dishful. I call it emotional chunks. They shouldn't be allowed to coagulate with your insides.

At the very least, now was better than later to reveal them.

"Nagi… Please open the door."

I pounced on Crawford's back, flinging my arms around his waist. "Good morning," I mumbled into his bare shoulder. My hands found his crotch. "Guess who."

"It can't be Nagi," Crawford said in a forced calm, "Because he still won't come out of the bathroom." He pried my fingers off, one by one.

"You sound oddly grumpy for someone who got laid at least twice last night."

"You kept count?"

"Was it more than twice?" I moved my hands to his zipper. "Only half-dressed. You were awake?" I pulled the zipper down.

"He broke the window. In his sleep." He pulled the zipper up.

"And?" Down.

"He screamed." Up.

"Doesn't he always, when you're in his room?" I was about to pull the zipper down when Crawford grabbed my wrist, tightly enough to imply he didn't appreciate my joke.

"He was in pain," Crawford whispered, raising his head and looking for all the world like he was shouting this to me. "The window broke, and he was in pain, and I thought for two seconds that they got him." He let me go, and I leaned against the door to face him.

"It was just his dream."

"He dripped blood as he ran out of the room. It sounded like he was…" Crawford shook his head, unable to believe it. "Crying."

"He must have been very frightened."

"He lost control."

"It's not like he can control his dreams. What do you expect from him?"

Crawford stared at me over my growing bubble. "… Bring him back."

/From the dream?/

"Bring him back," Crawford nodded his head, guiding my thoughts back to the right track, "To the way he was."

Oh. My bubble popped.

He frowned as I grimaced. "What's the problem?"

"I can't." If I ever felt shorter than Crawford, this was a moment when I truly noticed it.

"What do you mean-" his voice was regaining power "-You can't?"

"Didn't you learn anything at Rosenkreuz? Or from my uncle?" I retorted indignantly, though I still sounded quite small. "I can control a thought. If someone thought it was wrong to kill someone, then I could tell them that it was right and they would do it. But somewhere inside of them, would still be a conscience, something that distinguished between wrong and right."

"But if you managed to give him these emotions," Crawford reasoned, "They can be taken away."

"I never took you to be so dense before."

"What else don't I know here?"

"Nagi's human too, you know. He just needed to remember it."

"Oh my god." Crawford stared at me again. "… You've given our telekinetic a conscience."

The door opened wide. Nagi was sitting in the far corner of the bathroom, against the shower, white gauze and towels and tissues strewn about, stained with his distress. "Crawford," whispered Nagi.

Crawford, stepping into the nearest pile of gauze, had returned to his projected calm. "Yes?"

Nagi held up his hand like a child afraid that he'd broken something he shouldn't have. "I can't stop the bleeding."

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/Emotions are one thing. He can learn to work with the emotions./ Crawford worked feverishly on Nagi's hand, hoping not to reveal his numerous concerns. / A conscience is completely beyond our boundaries. Even yours./

/You didn't seem to mind last night./

"Schuldich!!" Crawford exploded, "Would you stop joking for one second and listen to me?"

At the outburst, Nagi backed up against the wall, pulling his hand away. "What are you talking about?" he asked with caution. His gaze flipped between us.

"It's nothing."

"I don't believe you." Nagi immediately regretted saying it, but he didn't regret wanting to know.

I turned to Crawford. "Should you tell him, or should I?"

"In all the time I've known you," Crawford spoke softly as he took Nagi's hand back into his, "You've never been afraid."

Nagi closed his eyes, hoping to erase the dream. "I've never shown it."

"Your life is in danger now."

"Don't say that!" I burst out, "Why do you have to be so negative?"

"If the organization knew," Crawford continued stiffly, "We would have enough trouble trying to prove that Nagi's feelings would not turn against them on my account. But now, if they decide he can't work for them or us, with or without emotions, the strength of his power will make him an enemy."

Nagi's eyes were still closed when he spoke, through uneven breaths. "But they don't know."

"Not yet."

"Shinzui does," Nagi murmured, slipping back down to the floor.

Crawford watched him struggle with his, before letting go of his hand. "What did you dream about?"

"I died."

Crawford stopped in the doorway, no more comforted by this than by my faint smile.

tbc

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