Title: chronos, in retrospect
Fandom: WK
Characters: Crawford/Schuldig, Nagi, mentions of Farfarello.
Rating: R to NC-17ish for some sex/violence.
Notes: Post-Kapital, and - as usual, in my case - ignoring the existence of Gluhen. After the fall of Esset, Crawford and Schuldig have parted ways, though not necessarily to the satisfaction of both parties.
There are times when sleep fails him — now, much more often than before. He keeps the apartment dark in the night; it's important to maintain that appearance of normality. His sit-ups and bench presses are done by the synthetic green wash of the computer screen, and in complete silence, save for the sucks and gurgles of the late-night bus plowing through the city. He boxes with his reflection in the window. On the monitor, he keeps a scrolling marquee of stock prices in foreign markets. The yen is down, which no longer matters to him. The dollar is down, but that means nothing.
Breathing heavily, he will hang over the numbers and recite them aloud before they roll across the screen. It is unimpressive. A calisthenic exercise for precognitives, nonsense data and unpronounceable acronyms — but the practice itself is comforting. All of time, digitized. Electronic units clicking upwards. The Greeks have a term for it. Kosmos Aisthetos. The sensible world.
His windows are towering. His ceilings, high enough to make the silence metastasize, cancerous. He is still awake when the sun begins to rise over distant suburbs. He unlocks his desk drawer and picks up his old gun. He flicks the safety off.
Two years ago, it never would have been on in the first place. Death only needs that millisecond to catch up.
He stands barefoot at his window, with the gun hanging limply against his thigh. He keeps it for nostalgia's sake alone. There is not anyone coming. Not anymore.
"We wanted this," he assures, out loud, to no one.
There is a remote viewer that works from the basement of a grocery store in China Town. He has a mirthless laugh, and it makes him shake, especially his hands. He wears a ring with a jeweled skull, and the stones in the eyesockets seem to move faster than the rest of him. He laughs when he sees Crawford, and the thousand dollars that Crawford pays him every week floats to the floor. Crawford picks it up, places it back on the table. Above them, the sporadic thump of a basketball hitting the asphalt. Below them, a train burrowing deeper into the earth.
The man mumbles something about a cigarette and Crawford passes him one from the pack in the pocket of his jacket. He hasn't smoked for twelve years, and when he did this wasn't his brand, but the red logo on the package is familiar enough. Crawford reaches over the table, and lights it for him.
"Anything today?," he asks.
"Mm. A woman with a veil over her face, washing clothes in a river. A bull crossing the street with tri-colored flags on its horns."
India, Crawford thinks, and makes an attempt not to question why. Schuldig always did like those colors, after all. The hot pink of ceremonial powders. The blue of a dancing god's skin. Places with mysterious foods and solemn lighting that makes things seem more significant than they do elsewhere.
"There are bodies in the river," the man says. "Bodies burning in the river."
He laughs again. The cigarette falls, rolls across the floor of the room, and continues to burn in the darkness. Crawford does not pick it up.
If he is the man who can see everything — why can't he see this?
He wears a suit invariably, still, even though what work he does, he does from his apartment. This is mostly suggesting financial strategies to internet entrepreneurs, media chiefs, real estate moguls, barely-post-adolescent boys with more trust fund than they could ever spend on sports cars and cocaine. His reputation is, of course, immaculate. He doesn't need the money, but it keeps his mind and his Talent occupied.
At night, he dines alone in the steakhouse on the corner of his block. The taste of muscle in his mouth, tinged blue with fear and adrenaline, reminds him of another life. He reads novels in German or English. He enjoys them well enough, but he cannot stand to hold on. A soggy paperback, orphaned on a park bench. A leather-bound classic, in the elevator of his building. A truth, abandoned piece by piece.
Even without precognition, he would know to reach into his pocket at 9:55 every Friday to take Nagi's phonecall. The boy is dependable that way.
"He called me last night."
"Who?," Crawford says and cringes slightly, especially when Nagi responds.
"You know who."
"What did he want?"
"It's Schuldig. He philosophized to me in German for half an hour on the subjective nature of reality, then he asked for money."
"And?"
"And I was going to wire him some. But he didn't know where he was."
"I see."
"Do you?"
There is a long pause. In Japan, it is already the future. It may be that which makes Nagi bold. It may be the office on the other side of the line. Nagi, standing at the window with Tokyo, his Tokyo, so distant beneath him that it is without depth or dimension. "Maybe you should go find him."
"Not a good idea."
"Why — "
From the other end of the line, Crawford hears the sound of a door opening. Hushed footsteps over carpet.
"Crawford, I have to go."
He folds the phone and drops it into his pocket. As his hand moves back to his thigh, he glances at his watch — sees his face reflected in the crystal. It's just a matter of curiosity, he tells himself. Professional or otherwise.
Thirteen months ago, they had still been in Asia. Crawford's memories of that crumbling hotel room in Beijing are mostly sensory - the tap of cockroach legs against the floorboards, and through the window, the cadenced wail of a police car.
They spend the majority of their time in bed together, with their hips and shoulders touching. In this memory, one of Schuldig's hands is still wrapped loosely around Crawford's penis. With the other, he is trying to light a damp cigarette that smells like molted vegetables. On the third try, he gets it, but it fizzles out after one drag. Disgusted, Schuldig flattens it into the nightstand, and turns to Crawford, and what he says, neither one of them expected.
"Should I stay with you?"
There is a terrible intimacy in his voice that Crawford cannot reciprocate. That old and lonely loyalty. The Greeks have a term for it. Synergism. Crawford stares at the flecks of dark blue at the far-edge of Schuldig's irises. He says, "It doesn't matter to me."
His car is crossing an avenue on the East Side when Crawford feels his phone vibrate against his thigh. He thinks of the beeswax sheen on Schuldig's lip, and almost doesn't pick up.
The sunlight dulls, as if on cue.
"Hello."
"Farfarello is dead."
"He was — unfit."
"Do you want to know how?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Gunned down by police in Belfast. Not Esset, not Rosenkreuz, not talents. Fucking cops. They put six bullets in his brain and he kept coming at them. He stopped after the seventh."
"He was sloppy."
"He was bored."
Crawford watches two busses fight for space on the block ahead. Schuldig says, "You look mopish."
He sees the eyes of the driver staring at him through the rearview mirror.
"Mopish," Crawford repeats. "Did I teach you English?"
"You did."
Schuldig's native German is a hodgepodge of slang and profanity, because it is the German of gutterpunks and street rats. His English is proper, calculated — because it is Crawford's. "I would never use a word like mopish."
Schuldig says something else, but a police cruiser is howling in the lane next to him and by the time it has passed, Schuldig has already hung up the phone.
On impulse, Crawford buys himself a ticket to England, and rents an apartment in London for two weeks under a fake name. As he is packing, he even sees himself there, hot tea and dull grey light over the Thames. He makes it half-way through the security check at JFK, then turns around without bothering to pick up his bag from the other end of the x-ray machine. The boarding pass is torn into pieces and left in a wastebasket in the parking lot. It is beautiful; the way the future tips beneath his feet, deeper than any sensory experience would allow, the world scrambling to catch up with the single decision that has thrown all of its carefully-laid plans into disarray.
That, he thinks, is control.
Not knowing the future. Being able to change it. The Greeks have a term for it. Hubris.
Crawford has an unresolved memory of Schuldig, sweating, laying on top of the sheets in his underwear, eating an old sandwich. The plastic wrap is making a strange cackling sound. There are cobwebs everywhere — dead insects cacooned in silk. Different city, same hotel room, or so it seems.
Schuldig's head is wagging slightly. He is drinking cheap vodka right out of the bottle, passing it to Crawford only when he is feeling particularly generous. Neither one has slept well for weeks, and Crawford's face and palms feel greasy from cheap street foods. Both of their defenses are adrift.
Before, when they fucked, they may as well have been fighting. One long unfinished argument, carried over from their days together at Rosenkreuz. This new Schuldig is sullen; not quite as cruel, more attentive to detail, running his fingertips along the strip of sensitive tissue below Crawford's stomach, exhaling over Crawford's pulse. They are too tired for anything urgent. He moves over Schuldig slowly, and Schuldig strains his head forward, speaks directly into Crawford's mouth and the alcohol singes his tastebuds. How much more? How much longer can we handle this?
Is this why Schuldig is guilty? Because he is a thief who has been handed all the passcodes, rifling through every intimate shameful humiliating secret?
How much longer can we handle this?
Crawford doesn't know.
Schuldig says, "I'm going to leave tomorrow."
"No," Crawford tells him, "You won't."
The sleep on opposite sides of the bed, not touching. Sometime in the night, he feels Schuldig's mouth against his cheekbone. It is not a kiss. Just a graze of lips light enough to ignore. In the morning, both Schuldig and his bags are gone. He forgets a pack of cigarettes, with a bright red logo. His green double-breasted trenchcoat, also left behind, is splayed out on the floor like a hollow person.
Brad Crawford and the world scramble to catch up.
He drives himself to New Jersey, and in the passenger seat, the gun is restless with potential energy. Deliberately, Crawford turns away from the future. He doesn't stop to read the name of the exit he takes off the highway; he veers down side streets and main streets, following no pattern. The motel parking lot that he pulls into is the same, random, a non-choice. Room eight, only because the bronze number is flipped on its side, and this obscurely pleases him.
Crawford cracks his knuckles. Slips on a pair of leather gloves. Once, Crawford had taught Schuldig how to speak English and how to shield his mind, and Schuldig had taught Crawford how to hotwire cars and pick locks.
The man in the room tries to hand him his wallet before Crawford has the chance to say a word. Farfarello would have drawn this out for hours — and Schuldig, he likes to throw his fish back so he can catch them again later. Crawford wants neither of these things. He shoots before the man has the chance to establish any context. The Greeks have a term for it. Euthanasia.
The man. The ache in his shoulder. The gastric pains in his intestines. The dry flake of unrinsed soap on his palms. The last spurt of desperate biochemistry. Then, he is gone.
Crawford takes a step back. He exhales, dissatisfied. On the drive home, he makes a game of predicting the state of the market, sliding back into the comfort of knowing.
Crawford remembers farther back, now. Before the running. Schwarz's first year in Japan.
Nagi is very young and still in his helpful-phase. When they order Chinese takeout, he distributes the packets of soy sauce and patiently extracts the snap peas out of Schuldig's lo mein, because Nagi knows he hates them. Schuldig is picky about his food and picky about his liquor; with dinner, he drinks imported vodka out of an eight-ounce cup filled with ice. With a quiet laugh, he says: "In all the history of dysfunctional families. You know, one day, we will be nostalgic for this."
Nagi asks what nostalgic means and looks to Crawford.
Crawford says, "It means nothing."
Today, Crawford's sweater hangs lopsided. The remote viewer says: "Dry hills. Olive trees. A doorway paved with a blue mosaic. A woman in white linen shorts."
Crawford leaves ten-thousand in freshly minted hundred-dollar bills. As he climbs the stairs, he hears them rustling to the floor, but he does not turn around.
He packs by the silver-twinge of evening light that comes in through the window. The moon is maybe eighteen days into its cycle. The stock ticker is off. His bank is failing, and he knew it would happen four days ago, and still he left his money where it was. He feels fine. More attuned to the dull heat of the future in his lower brain, firing randomly now with no numbers to occupy it.
Crawford's body is humming.
He calls the airport and books a flight to Athens, knowing Schuldig will be gone by the time he gets there, but his trail will still be fresh. He packs his suits and his cellphone. A green trenchcoat that has been in a plastic bag on the floor of his closet. The computer, wiped clean and abandoned along with the apartment. The gun, he dismantles. Some of it goes down his floor's enormous trash chute. The rest of it is hidden. He will have to buy another one,when he touches down in Europe.
This time, he will not turn around.
The Greeks have a term for it. Moira. Destiny.