Soo... After months of not getting my ass up to finish this, and weeks of having it finished but leaving it to rot somewhere in a folder, I finally decided to upload another fic... (Second in the 'giving fics uncreative German titles. 'Bleib bei mir' translates to 'Stay by/with me'.)
It's all thanks to Red (TheRedLightning), because she kept telling me she'd oil (yeah, oil) and feather me if I don't do anything soon. I also tried to have her beta-read it, but that didn't really work, so please forgive the errors that you might find... I'm pretty oblivious when it comes to typos. .
For this fic, I don't own anything, and there will be violence in the near future. So if you don't like that, give reading this a second thought please. xD (It's not in this chapter, though.)
So, thank you Red, and the rest of you, enjoy the fic.
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Ice as far as one could see, clouded grey sky that promised never-ending snowfall, and temperatures that allowed no living creature to survive on their own in this merciless white desert. Really, what were they doing there? Hyuuga stared down the map unfolded in front of him, boredom mixed with irritation, as if his half-glare could make the paper turn interesting. But nothing happened and he shook his head - why did someone draw a map for this place to begin with? There was nothing to know about, nothing. It was empty, lifeless area, one or two hills every now and then, but besides that, everything was flat and extremely boring. The map was, of course, just as empty and therefore pretty pointless. But since it was light and small they had still taken it with them.
Because we need to know about every hill in the area. Hyuuga rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses and then smiled, grabbing a pencil. There actually was something good about this empty map - much drawing space. But then again, there was nothing to draw. His imagination was kidnapped, tortured and painfully killed by the empty whiteness - easy to underestimate, but merciless and cruel, not only with life. Sadly, when it came down to the fight of fantasy against nothingness... Nothingness still won, swallowed it all. A voice called him back into reality, like it did so often, and for once he didn't mind.
"What exactly are you planning on doing with that pencil and that map?"
Hyuuga looked up and smiled, throwing his thoughts about life and fantasy and nothing aside, as he met the gaze of violet eyes that were just as empty as the map.
"Nothing at all, Aya-tan. As you can see, I'm just holding a pencil, and the map just happened to lay around here. No harm done." Hyuuga grinned and threw the pencil aside while looking around a bit. There had to be something interesting, but actually there was nothing but Aya-tan that could possibly stop (t)his boredom.
"Why are we even doing this?" He got up while sticking a lollipop into his mouth walking a few steps to call his feet back from the dead. "I mean... Not that I don't like Antwort... No wait, I actually don't like Antwort, but still, why are we going here yet again?"
"We're sent to find the ship that crashed over enemy territory and retrieve survivors of the crew that fell into the enemy's hands."
"...Yeah right. Why did that ship crash in the first place?"
"That's of no importance for our mission."
"They didn't even tell us? Wow, they're really praying for our death with all they have right now, hah!" Hyuuga laughed and turned back to the window and the snowy landscape. "Too bad for them. Even if this is the land where hell froze over, they won't get rid of us with nothing."
"You never know. If nothing on earth can harm you, then maybe it's nothing itself that'll kill you."
"Yes... Wha?" Hyuuga tilted his head, trying to sort the words out in his mind. It wasn't that hard, really, but if it was Aya-tan who said it, there was probably more to it... But what? Hyuuga decided to just shake it off. "I doubt we'll be killed by nothing, because if nothing kills us, we won't be killed, and won't die, and therefore nothing will kill us, and we'll live and be killed by nothing... See what you've done to me!" Hyuuga turned around, pouting with the lolli in his mouth. "Stop talking such cryptic stuff!"
"It wasn't cryptic."
"To me it very well was!"
"That's not my problem, is it?"
"How about caring about my problems, too?"
"Not if it's something as ridiculous as you confusing yourself with your own words."
"Those were your words."
"Wrong."
"I'm not!"
At that point, Ayanami just turned around and disappeared from the room, leaving Hyuuga alone with the snow, once again. "Aya-tan is mean. He knows I'm right." Hyuuga pouted once more and sucked on his lolli, but had already forgotten what he was talking about when the ruins of a giant ship came in sight - a ship exactly like the one they were flying with.
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"Konatsu, what are you doing?" Hyuuga was horrified to see his Begleiter busy with paperwork yet again, even while being far, far away from their desks and everything connected to them.
"I'm working, Major Hyuuga."
"But we already arrived at the crashed ship!"
"I'll finish this one quickly."
"I'm not waiting here!" Hyuuga called while already making his way back through the corridors. They'd land here, get off and start searching for... Yeah, for what? Footsteps? Unlikely, the snow hat long washed away all traces, like the sea water did to those in sand. But then again, everything was better than sitting around any longer, he just couldn't take this boredom anymore.
Ayanami was already waiting, instructing the small group that should help with the searching. They hadn't taken many men with them - not even all of the Black Hawks. Only Ayanami, Hyuuga and Konatsu went along - with all the trouble around the Eye of Mikhail, Ayanami decided to have Katsuragi stay back, leaving Kuroyuri with him, just in case. They'd be back within few days, anyway, so why going through the trouble of bringing along many soldiers, when one Black Hawk was enough to take care of Antwort's whole army?
The moment they stepped out of the ship, Hyuuga started rethinking that. Maybe it would've been better to just stay in the ship... There was a strange atmosphere around them.
"Konatsu, I've got a bad feeling about this!" he warned the Begleiter that was walking right next to him.
"I think it's called cold, Major Hyuuga." the blonde boy replied.
"I agree." Ayanami was walking ahead, looking around, searching for anything that could help with the mission.
"Great, now you're both mean! See, I was right with that bad feeling!"
There was a sigh from Konatsu, but else, silence as they walked further into the empty desert, the men splitting up until they were scattered into small groups, small black dots all over the white.
The silence came to an end when the first enemies were sighted and soon came at them from every direction.
"So they did ambush us." Ayanami said while already trying to calculate the losses they'd have to take at the end of the battle.
"Now it's getting interesting~ Let's go Konatsu, off to the right, you go and help the poor guys over there." Hyuuga commanded while drawing one of his swords. Konatsu wordlessly followed the order while doing the same.
The dark haired swordsman was glad to have some action after all the sitting, though if the strange feeling never quite left him, even when the heat of battle had long driven the outer cold away. Ayanami didn't actually fight much, since Hyuuga was taking most of the men coming at them, he tried to find out the meaning of this attack. It didn't exactly take him long to do that.
"We've come for nothing. They've probably killed all men that were on the ship, else they wouldn't attack us so openly. The mission was pointless from the beginning."
"Great, I knew it! All for nothing! Heh, didn't we already talk about that?"
"Maybe."
"Maybe, my ass... Oh, looks like Konatsu's having problems over there, I'll go help him~" Which was a lie, Konatsu was doing fine, but most of the enemies were trying to attack the normal soldiers, and the major didn't want to miss the fun. "I'll be right back, will you be fine on your own for a minute?" he asked teasingly while trying not to sink into the snow too deeply.
"Of course."
"Lie~"
"..."
Hyuuga laughed and made his way over to where most of the fight took place. Now that all allies had disappeared from Ayanami's attack range, he started using his Zaiphon instead of his sword, while watching the snow slowly stain with more and more blood.
If it would rain blood instead of water, and water was flowing through everyone's veins instead of blood... It'd also snow blood, and the snow would be red from the start. If colorless blood would be spilled over blood red snow, would the snow turn white again?
It wouldn't.
Because it doesn't matter whether it got stained with time, or was stained from the start. It can't become pure again.
In the midst of enemies, fighting and blood, no one saw one of Antwort's soldiers halting, looking around and quietly taking out a fuse.
In the blink of an eye, the snow under their feet disappeared, all colors mixed together and, finally, became light, throwing everything into even more blinding, endless white.