Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ White Shadows and Black Reflections ❯ Walpurgisnacht, part III ( Chapter 7 )

He continued down the path. After a while, he came upon a small wood. Oak, maple, beech and lime were scattered loosely alongside the way. The treetops made a brilliant green roof overhead, which dappled the ground in sunlight. Somewhere, a cuckoo called and leaves rustled as some squirrels scampered through the branches overhead.

 

The path led him to a small brook that babbled merrily through the miniature forest. It was neither very deep nor very broad and the path continued on the other side. The water would soothe his sore feet nicely indeed.

 

Oddly, he remembered his mum telling him that evil could not cross free-flowing water and he briefly wondered if he would be able to continue following this path.

 

Shrugging, he first quenched his thirst and then, with a pained groan, he pulled off his boots and sat down on a boulder beside the shallow stream. He plunged his feet into the water and found it thankfully cool. His feet felt better almost instantly.

 

Comfortable, safe….pleasant surroundings….

 

He had to do something about this vision if he could. The sense of peace and relaxation spreading inside of him was creeping him out.

 

Strange.

 

I still remember having to fight real hard just so that I could string two thoughts together, because sometimes everything inside was so jumbled.

 

I remember how difficult it was to concentrate some days, because just being aware that I was alive hurt so bad I could hardly breathe.

 

It is all still there…but fainter. Like being pulled from a raging storm into a safe haven. The storm is still there…I can feel it. But somehow….outside?

 

The girl. She had been brought to him as a plaything, as a means of relieving stress. Another hostage in his war with God, and, failing God's surrender, something to tear apart so that the kill-high would drown out his nightmares. But then she had neatly turned the tables on him and Schwarz's intentions, and the way she went about it left him wondering.

 

Until now she hasn't even made an attempt to attack. Even when I offered her an opportunity to do so.

 

So what is she trying to do? Bribe me somehow?

 

Find some way she can control me? That's something not even Rosenkreuz quite managed.

 

Scramble my mind? Been there, done that….hm…didn't get a T-shirt though….Maybe I should ask Crawford to buy me one. If he goes on like that, he certainly will have to get one for himself.

 

Sheesh. These days, when I look at him, I can hear glass breaking.

 

Crawford had ordered the girl for him, so now she was his responsibility. Sooner or later, he would have to decide on a course of action concerning her.

 

She's not just a plaything anymore. She's a threat. Granted, she only managed to get so far because Schwarz didn't expect her to be some kind of talent, but still, the prudent thing would be to kill her as soon as I get the chance.

 

Yeah, right. Farfarello, the prudent Berserker.

 

He could almost hear Schuldig laughing his ass off at the thought.

 

So maybe he wasn't prudent. Being prudent was no fun. And it implied that you still had something left to loose.

 

Ah…but patience is a different thing entirely. When you're out hunting, you have to bide your time….so you can strike when the right moment has come.

 

Patience had served as his weapon before.

 

Since he didn't react to his environment much (it usually wasn't worth the bother) people had a tendency to think of him as a plaything, an empty doll….or a mindless tool. To be used and played with, only to be shut away again once the fun was over.

 

And he liked it that way.

 

It made his prey careless. They didn't notice how he observed, memorized, calculated. Just like deer didn't notice a Jaguar, crouching in the branches above them.

 

Thank you Ryan for showing me the virtue of keeping quiet and biding my time. Thank you for showing me the virtue of good planning.

 

The cold anger and hatred rising in him while he thought of Ryan felt good. They chased away the calm serenity spreading through him, so he concentrated on the memory. He wouldn't let her manipulate him.

 

Ryan. A care-taker at the very first mental institution he had been sent to. A man with a penchant for small boys.

 

And I was easy prey, no? Pretty, small….out of my mind …just your type.

 

After they admitted me to the institution, I cried almost the whole time.

 

(Because I wanted my father back, my mother, my sister.)

(Because the One I had loved and trusted had betrayed me, abandoned me, condemned me.)

 

And that turned you on even more, didn't it?

 

Ryan hadn't expected the heavily drugged boy to resist much, let alone tell tales. And even if the boy had been able to string enough words together to tell anybody of his plight….who would have believed the loony-case anyway?

 

The man had relished this feeling of power, gloated at his mediocre ingenuity.

 

He had particularly liked the first few times, where the boy had cringed away from his hand and had called out to his now-dead parents for help. He had lapped up the boys' tears with his tongue while he fucked the child until it bled. So tight. So hot.

 

It didn't hurt. The fucking. Nothing did, compared to loosing my family.

 

(Still… a feeling of sickness, amassing right at the bottom of his stomach until it overflows. He throws up every time after Ryan visits him.)

 

A shameless whore. Not fit to live. Worthless but for one thing.

 

He told me so. And Ryan told me so.

 

And nobody came to my rescue. Nobody saw or cared what was happening to me. Not even God. God never cares.

 

(The last spark of hope, of faith, slowly dying by inches. Leaving decay and festering rot in its wake. All other feelings die in the face of the need to kill. It feels so good.)

 

He was stronger than me, older, more experienced. He held the keys to my cell. So I watched him. I waited. I bided my time….and my time came.

 

Everybody had thought that it had been an accident. A freakish one, but an accident nonetheless.

 

I tongued the tablets they gave me for days, just as I had watched some of the other patients do. I collected them. And then I fed them to another patient. While the doctors and nurses were busy with him as he lay on the ground, convulsing and screaming, I filched a syringe and some drugs from the doctors' bag. I had it all planned. I knew the routines. And the next time Ryan came around, I waited until he lay beside me, sated and half-dazed, and I rammed the syringe into his throat. I pumped him full of juice and he went under like a stone. I got up and grabbed his keys.

 

The boy couldn't have pulled the unconscious, heavy man into the corridor on his own. But wheeling the bed into the corridor with the prey lying on it worked just fine.

 

When the boy came to the big marble sculpture opposite the elevator, all he had to do was push the man off the bed and position him.

 

…right at the feet of Our Lord, smiling beatifically.

 

Then I went to the storage room, and, using the keys again, nicked some rope and a broom.

 

One end of the rope went around the statues' throat. The boy had to climb a bit for that. After all, the statue was about 8 feet high.

 

The hands of the Lord, stretched out in blessing, were no more than an accessory to murder then, just as they are now. And they made good handholds.

 

The other end of the rope was tied to the broom.

 

The boy gagged Ryan, so he wouldn't scream the house down when the plan reached fruition. Then he stepped into the elevator, broom in hand and pressed “down”. The broom was positioned horizontally to the closing doors, so that they would anchor the rope during the descent.

 

The “thump” of the sculpture toppling was sweet like a demented angel singing.

 

Ryan's' body and the carpeting nicely muffled the noise. Apart from the other patients, we were alone in our ward. Ryan had seen to that. Didn't want to be disturbed while playing. Worked nicely in my favour, too. And nobody minds the occasional thump in a madhouse anyway.

 

When the boy returned to his floor, he put back the rope, the broom and the bed. The keys he kept and hid. And then he came back to his tormentor's side.

 

Ryan was awake again. The statues' head had crushed his lower abdomen, and it looked like Jesus was giving him a blow-job.

 

I made sure he saw my face as I dipped my fingers into his wounds, digging into his exposed innards, and then, when I licked his blood from my fingers, he screamed through his gag. He didn't stop screaming until he died. I made sure of that.

 

The more Ryan's breathing slowed, hitched, stumbled, the more a feeling of irrevocable damnation overwhelmed the boy.

 

(No more denial, no more struggling, no more hope. Satisfaction tastes like the thick, sweet cream his mother used to serve with her scones. Delicious.)

 

Heh. I kept that gag for weeks. Like a cuddle blanket. The nurses thought it cute that I took that piece of cloth everywhere I went. My own little piece of hell.

 

The memories had brought back icy hatred and cold determination to warm him. Good.

 

Ryan had been his. And now the girl was his too.

 

So what do I do with her? In the real world, my knife is still at her throat. As long as this isn't over, neither of us will be able to move. If I can find her within this vision, I can kill her here. If I can get out of this dream before her, I can kill her in the real world. If she kills me here, I will be dead, but she'll still have to deal with the rest of Schwarz…and the way Mastermind dumped her on me, she has to know that they would kill her messily and slowly.

 

Well, let's see….

 

He concentrated. His breathing slowed. He pushed down and outward with his awareness, searching.

As he knew from experience, telepaths always had to put bits and pieces of themselves into their vision in order to control it. The vision alone was not enough to grab them by, let alone reach them…unless you somehow managed to gain access to the core. Connect to the mainframe and crack the code, as Naoe would put it.

 

How careless of her. Granted, eating that rice-ball was a bit risky…but also the first connection I made. Drinking the water was the second.

 

I should be able to get some kind of leverage now…or at least a bit of information.

 

He concentrated on the girl as he remembered her from his cell: how she had acted the scared little rabbit while Mastermind was there and how frosty her eyes had been when she had dropped the masquerade. The scars on her body.

 

The air seemed to tighten around him, becoming almost liquid. The brook's babbling became louder…quieter…louder…clearer. Voices.

 

A small girls' voice. Inquisitive. Sombre. “….And why do I always have to tell everybody that you're my dad?”

 

An older man. Patient, with a hint of humour. “It's a game Jules. Like hide and seek. So they won't find you.”

 

“But you said they don't even know I exist! So why do I have to hide?”

 

“Because you're the hidden Joker. The one card that can maybe beat them, if it's played carefully.”

 

“And only a hidden Joker can win the game?”

 

“That's right.”

 

“It's a stupid game. I don't want to play anymore.” A hint of defiance.

 

Sadness. “And jeopardize everything your parents did for you?”

 

“……no…..but….”

 

“Then go pack your things. We're moving in half an hour.”

 

With an almost audible twang, the air released its hold, and the brook became unintelligible once more.

 

Interesting. A pity that this is all I could pull from her. But the longer I walk this dream, the more access will I gain. So for now, I'll have to go on and wait for her to make the next move. Not the best strategy I've ever come up with, but then, patience does have a tendency to pay off.

 

Wait for me, my aingeal. I will find you yet.

 

He put his boots back on and headed across the brook to the other side where the path continued.

 

After a while it occurred to him that crossing the free-flowing water hadn't been a problem at all.