Insert standard disclaimers. Not mine, never will be, etc., etc., etc.

Edited 12/29/04 for the note at the bottom, nothing more.

Going Home

"Schuld! Get up or you'll be late for school!"

It's too cold. The boy in the bed pulled his blankets up over his head. It was too cold to get out of bed, even if he did have to go to school. Not that he had a particular love or hate for that part of life. He enjoyed the challenge that school brought, but hated some of his classmates. Mostly those who had found out his first name. He hated his mother for that name. That was about all he really hated her for, though. She was strict, but not cruel.

"Schuld Christian Reinhardt!" his mother's voice shouted up the stairs at him. "Get up or I'll drag you out of that bed!"

Yes, mom, he replied mentally as he slowly pulled himself out of the covers. He didn't doubt that she would. "I'm awake, mom!" he called back as he dropped his legs over the side of the bed and to the floor.

He was a lanky teenager, not yet grown into his new height. He didn't quite look proportioned, and that was a constant sore spot with his tormentors at school. His mother told him that he'd be handsome in time, but he couldn't see it when he looked in the mirror. He just saw the fair-skinned, lanky, red-haired boy that stared back at him. The boy that girls liked to talk to because he had an uncanny ability to empathize and analyze, but never really liked in that way. He had gotten a few admirers since he had started to let his hair grow out, but they still wouldn't date him. They'd tell him that he was cute, and then swoon over Alexander Kaufmann--the tall, blonde haired boy that was the star player on the school football team.

Schuld didn't like him. It wasn't just because Alexander got the girls, either. The boy was abusive behind his pretty face. Katharina Engel had been one of Schuld's best friends once. When the football player had asked her out, she had been happy, and Schuld was happy along with her. Right until the day that he found a note in his desk that said that she couldn't talk to him any more. That was all it said, and it wasn't until he tried to catch up with her on their walk home, that he understood why.

He wasn't even sure why he understood it. They didn't say a word out loud to each other. But he knew. He just knew that the bruise on her cheek was because Alexander had seen them on a daily stop at an ice cream shop. They had always stopped there with what little money they got from their parents. And on the day before they got that allowance, they were always too broke to afford more than one sundae, so they shared it. It wasn't a romantic thing. It started innocently enough while they were children, and just had become a routine.

She had been going out with Alexander long enough that she was afraid of him. Schuld had felt that without even seeing her eyes. And with all of that feeling, he decided that it was best that he just cross the street and continue on his way. That continued for the last almost year.

And had you stopped her last week, would she still be alive?

He tied his hair back into the short ponytail he used to keep it out of his face. Why couldn't he have stopped her? Why was he so afraid of what she'd say?

It was guilt talking now, he knew. He always had that guilt. What could he have done to change something? If he had just had more courage, what could he have changed in his life?

The funeral had been hard for him. He just wanted to reach into the casket and wake her up. She was so peaceful there. He still felt the sadness that surrounded her, though, even in death. And then Alexander had approached him, and he had nearly been sick at the way that the other boy's arrogance had overwhelmed him before he even spoke a word.

It had taken every bit of his self control to not kill the football player. Instead, he had just snarled and walked away.

The guilt still weighed on him, though, that he could have done something to help if he had just had the courage. That Katharina wouldn't have thought it was a good idea to use the drugs that eventually killed her.

He pulled himself out of his thoughts as he heard other voices downstairs. His mother was talking to someone. She must have let someone in right after her last threat to get him up, he realized with a glance at the clock. She would have yelled up at him for stalling by now.

There was a noise--one that many years later he'd recognize as the sound of a gun muffled by a silencer--then footsteps on their way up the stairs. "Sorry, mom, I lost track of the ti--" His sentence dropped off as the door opened to reveal two men and a woman. "Who are...?"

Pain. His head felt like it was going to explode for a moment, then everything went black.

xxxxx

"Schuldig?"

Nagi's voice brought the red-haired telepath back into the present with a start. "Yeah? What is it, Nagi?" he slurred his reply as he looked up at the boy. He was drunk, and he knew he'd regret it in the morning. He always regretted doing anything that caused him to lose control of his talent.

"Crawford's been worried about you," was the almost emotionless reply. There was something about the look that told the German that Nagi was worried too, in spite of how he acted. "You haven't been acting quite like yourself since Farfarello ran off with that girl."

Schuldig shook his head with a faint smile. "You guys shouldn't worry. I'm fine. Just...finding the memory of this place to be too overwhelming. I grew up here, you know..." He stood up and walked over to the room's window to lean against it. "Nice, quiet little place with enough industry to keep it that way. Mamma came here when I was five. She didn't want me growing up in Dresden. Too much there that could tempt a young boy, she said. She probably was right."

He leaned his head on the glass with a heavy sigh before continuing. "My best friend right up until I was about fourteen was a girl named Katharina Engel. I met her not long after we moved here. She was a pretty, happy girl that wanted nothing more in life than to settle down and have a family."

Nagi stepped closer to his teammate, his head tilted in curiosity. "What happened to her?"

Schuldig raised the bottle in his hands to his lips for a long moment and remained silent long after he lowered it again. "About a week before Rosenkreuz took me, she died of a drug overdose. I had seen her not too long before it happened, and...I was afraid to say anything, but I just felt that something was wrong with her. Guess if she hadn't been dating Kaufmann I would have talked to her...then again, she probably wouldn't have been doing drugs if she hadn't been dating him." He moved to take another sip from the bottle but found it being pulled out of his hand quite forcefully. "Hey!"

"You're drunk enough, Schuldig," Nagi returned softly as he caught the bottle in his hand. "Especially if you're actually telling me these things..."

Schuldig shook his head. "Not as drunk as you think, kid. I just want to go home, and Freiburg isn't it any more. Not unless she's here..."

"Katharina?"

"No. Someone I met in Japan. Never saw her before we left...I don't even know if she misses me." He saw the faint smirk on Nagi's lips in the reflection of the window. "Like you don't know what it's like..."

Nagi shook his head. "I know exactly what it's like, Schuldig. I just never thought I'd see you knowing it. You're worse than some of my contemporaries in Japan, moping around wishing that someone would love them."

"Tch...I don't care if she loves me. I just care that she'll be close enough that I'll always know she's there...I can't feel her this far away. Can't feel that smile...that warmth..."

Nagi blinked silently as he watched Schuldig slowly slide to the floor, his words becoming more and more incoherent and mumbled. Moments like these made him glad for his talent, glad that he wouldn't have to figure out how to physically carry the telepath to the room's bed.

xxxxx

Crawford looked up from the paper he had been reading at the small table in the kitchen of the apartment they shared. "How is he?"

Nagi shrugged as he picked a glass off the counter and went to the sink to rinse it out. "He wants to go back to Japan. Something about too many memories here and wanting to be near someone back there," he replied. Crawford nodded silently, and turned back to his paper. "I think he needs to go back..."

"It's too dangerous to split the team up more, Nagi. Particularly letting him go back on his own."

The boy finished with his glass and turned to the refrigerator. Crawford knew his wishes on going back to Japan. There was nothing there for him any more than there was anything in Germany for Schuldig. He set the glass on the counter before taking a bottle out of the refrigerator and pouring as he spoke. "I was thinking that you should take him back. I can stay here and keep an eye on Rosenkreuz..."

The paper crinkled. "Nagi, you'd stick out here more than the three of us together. I..."

"I'm capable of making up my own identity. Besides, Rosenkreuz doesn't think much of me. I'll be fine. And I can find you a lot better than you can find me."

Crawford's mouth turned in a bit of a frown. "I'll sleep on it. I'm not keen on leaving either of you in a dangerous situation like this."

Nagi nodded slightly. "Right now, I think Schuldig would be more vulnerable alone than I would." He turned to look at Crawford, not surprised in the least at the nod that he almost missed. Crawford knew that a distracted Schuldig was as much a danger to himself as the rest of them. Particularly if he picked up a habit of drinking this much every night to dull the pain.

"Maybe you're right, maybe not. I'll decide that in the morning, Nagi."

Nagi nodded again. "I understand. Good night, Crawford."

"Good night, Nagi."

Owari

Quick note on my choice of names for Schuldig: I know about German laws on naming children, but considering how much reality we often have to suspend in this series just for it to make sense, I went with the name anyway for effect. As much as she may love him, it doesn't change the fact that his mother sees him as she embodiment of what she sees as her sin of having a child outside of marriage.

Yes, I picked the middle name "Christian" on purpose, too.