Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Through the Eyes of a Child ❯ Epilogue ( Epilogue )

Through the Eyes of a Child

By Llewlyn

Summary: After episode 24, Crawford takes an unconscious Schuldich to New York City to take care of him. But when Schu wakes up, he isn't the same man he was before. How will Crawford adjust to taking care of a telepath with the mind of a five-year-old?

Rating: R for language, adult situations, violence, and references to child abuse, prostitution, and drug use.

Disclaimer: I don't own them, as much as I like to think I do. But if you do and want to give them to me…

Warning: Angst, death, the REAL end… I think. Probably. I don't know.

Chapter Epilogue

Schuldich moved out of the apartment the next week, choosing a building still close, but smaller and better suited for one person, not two or three. Llew left after him, going back to his own home. For a while it was strange without Peter's idiotic cartoons in the morning, the occasional temper tantrums, but it was certainly calmer. We grew accustomed to the peacefulness, Ran and I. Ran took a job in the same organization as me, working with normal people who'd never been Gifted but knew someone who was.

Ran and I held a small, private wedding ceremony a year later, in a small, pretty chapel in the country outside of the city. Schuldich, Llew, and the rest of Weiß were in attendance, along with Ran's sister. When we said our vows, and kissed, I could feel Schuldich's pain deep in the back of my mind, and I felt sorry for him, but there wasn't anything I could do for him. I loved Ran and that was all that there was.

We adopted a little girl from an orphanage in China, a pretty little six-year-old named Kong Mengling with large, dark brown eyes, and an attitude to rival Schuldich's. She was bossy and precocious and so charming at the same time. We were wrapped around her little finger; we were her slaves, and we loved it and her.

Then Ran fell ill with some unknown disease. There were no symptoms, and no one but Ran seemed affected by it. He began to waste away before my eyes, and every night in our bed he seemed a little bit frailer, a little paler, his hair infinitesimally more dull. And once again, there was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do. Every day, Mengling asked why her daddy didn't feel good, why he was too tired to play, and we didn't know what to say to her. We didn't know why.

The only person who didn't seem that concerned was Schuldich, but I thought I understood that. He was still uncomfortable around us, and I knew deep in his heart that he still hoped I'd come to my senses and return to him.

That was before I realized that Schuldich's eyes sparkled every time he happened to see Ran and I, and Ran wasn't feeling to well… and that after each meeting with Schuldich, my partner was especially drained- and that Schuldich always seemed stronger after a chance meeting. I asked a friend at the organization to check Ran's mind as a favor. He didn't find anything, but I had a feeling that there was something hidden in his psyche that was just beyond our reach, and it wasn't something that belonged there.

It took four years for my lover to finally waste away before our eyes, pretending nothing was wrong, that at the end, he was barely strong enough to wake up each morning. Finally, he didn't wake up. On the eve of our fifth anniversary, I woke up and realized that the figure beside me in the bed was cool, the last vestiges of his body's warmth leaving him. Tears formed in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks as I bent over him, cradling his body in my arms, whispering in his ear that he wasn't allowed to leave yet, that we had a daughter to raise, that I loved him and I needed him to come back to me. Mengling found me that way when she was getting ready to go to school; she froze in the doorway, then joined me on the bed, arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders as she cried into my neck.

Finally, Ran's body was cold and we rose, calling an ambulance to come and get his body. I held Mengling close, stroking her black hair and watching, by this time dry-eyed, as my love's body was carried away.

At the funeral, a week later, we gathered around the coffin. The same small group that had been at our recitation of our vows was there again, with the addition of some of our friends from work and our daughter. Mengling kissed the simple black lacquered coffin above Ran's face, whispering that she loved him and a small, simple prayer to no god in particular that he was happy, wherever he was. I did the same, and we stayed side by side as the others left. Eventually, Llew came and led Mengling away, telling her to let me have some time to myself.

"Good bye, my love," I whispered, standing beside his coffin. "I only wish you could have stayed longer… I'll be a good father for Mengling, I'll try to be as good as you were…" Tears trailed down my face as I touched the black wood. "Save a place for me, wherever you are…" I kissed the coffin once more, then turned and left, walking away just as the sun broke through the thin cloud cover that had been above us all day. I glanced back to see the black shape gleaming with an almost purple sheen, the light reflecting off its surface seeming to me to be the color of Ran's eyes in passion, a dark, vibrant purple.

And I couldn't shake the terrifying feeling that someone close by was glad that my lover was dead, and that the person, green with jealousy, had killed him….