Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ To Those About To Die ❯ Chapter 13 - Nocturne ( Chapter 13 )

Chapter Thirteen -- Nocturne

Time? What is time, when sleep will not come? Fitful sleep and disjointed dreams haunted my nights as fruitless effort and frustration eroded my days.

Seven years, and more it has been.

I have begun to truly fear for my sanity.

Again I lay waiting for sleep to come, Kiko snoring softly at my back. He asks for nothing, gives of himself without hesitation. I wish I could give more back to him.

I sighed. Why did I fear madness so? Not that it would matter to me once I'd arrived in the thick of it. Similarly, why mourn for the dead? It is the living, and the sane, who need our sympathy. The truly lost have no cares.

Sleep overtook me like a dark tide.

I dreamed I stood within a chapel. It had a medieval look about it, an archetypal church from my own personal trivia: dark wood, candles, colored light spilling down from a dozen stained glass windows.

Before the altar stood a tall, slender man with red hair and wearing a fine white suit, smoking a cigarette and regarding the crucifix as an art critic studying an unfamiliar genre.

Dimly I knew that this was a blurry, exhausted dream, that it was not real. In this dream, I approached the man who I knew would turn and be one of my quarry. On impulse, I called out to him.

He turned, and shook his head sadly. The dream-Schuldig gestured toward a side door with his cigarette, then turned toward the front door and walked away.

I was lucid enough within the dream to want to know what was behind that door. It could become a nightmare, or I could find a bit of insight that eluded my waking mind.

I opened the door.

The room beyond it belonged in a nineteenth-century gentleman's home, not a church. The walls were paneled with wood that had been polished to a deep glow. An old-fashioned globe rested in its stand near the desk, and kerosene lamps gave the room a dignified and somber light. An old-style record player with a burnished horn played softly from the corner. The music was haunting, tragic and painful.

A well-dressed man stood by the window. One elegantly cuffed wrist lay against the frame, his hand dangling something shiny at eye level.

I moved closer to see what it was. Twisted about his fingers gleamed the gold chain of a pocket watch. The timepiece spun slowly, suspended between his gaze and the window.

He knew I was there. "Good day, Mr. Holmes."

"Moriarty," I replied.

"I knew you would come." He turned, grey hair falling across his eyeglasses, and returned the watch to his vest pocket. Brad Crawford regarded me without suspicion or fear.

This was a very strange dream, even by my standards. Never could I remember being so aware within one. I decided to go on with it, though I knew I could have woken myself at any time.

"Sir, a question, if I may." I was going to test this dream, see if my answers lay hidden within this wood-paneled room. However, my intention and my action did not agree. Instead of "Where are you?" or even "What should I do?" I found myself asking, "Will you take us with you?"

"You know the answer already."

I wanted to run, to vanish, to do anything other than wake to another day of searching in an unjust vendetta. "I do not want to fight you."

"I know. But you will."

Around us the room dissolved. Moriarty/Crawford vanished with it. Now I stood on a vast plain, a battlefield strewn with the dead. Acrid metallic smoke burned my nose, and I coughed. Still, it was only a dream, I knew this to be so. I drew myself up and looked around.

I saw another figure, back turned toward me as he regarded something he must have found more interesting. This man had black hair, long and a little wild. Crawford again?

Flames rose up from the ground to dance about his ankles and the hem of his cloak like a faerie ring. His hair, only just hinting at a future grey, fluttered in the rising wind. In front of him, just within my view, his right hand rested atop a cane, or was it the hilt of a sword? About his wrist he wore a wide metal band. He turned slightly to the left and I could make out his profile. His eye was dark blue, like the boy's were said to be. But this had to be Crawford, he could be no one else.

In a low, melodic voice that bore no emotion he stated, "If you come to Nihon, you will die."

I woke screaming.