Snippet of time captured in a few pages, sometime before Weiss Kreuz begins. Ages are approximated.

Point of Balance

Though it's really not surprising
I hold a force I can't contain.

--Garbage "Medication"

* Former East Berlin, December 1989*

Before tonight, Bradley has never been to Berlin.

He has, of course, see photos of it, black and white smears of figures that always seem to date from 1933. Berlin is nothing like 1933; lights peal around him in semi circles that never seem to come together, and small, beautiful creatures dance like butterflies across his gaze. Bradley has never been one to stare, to question reality, but the physical world seems fragmented below this ancient, stained city. Bodies jut up again his, and he Sees with both Sixth Sense and chestnut eyes everything around him.

A girl's thigh brushes with his own, and she smiles, smiles so darkly he thinks the world is going to End. And then she's flicked her hips in some other direction, grinding her body against someone else. Bradley runs an impatient hand through his hair, smoothing away locks that will never fall into place correctly. They hang like blots of ink in his line of vision, and he blows a tiny gust of air at them.

"Enjoying yourself?" Schuldich purrs into his ear, almost allowing his teeth to scrape across Bradley's earlobe. The American recoils from the near caress and with a growl shoves his fists into his pockets. He shouldn't be so bothered by the half drunken youth; Schuldich is fifteen. Schuldich is uneducated and Schuldich is nothing more than an animal that needs to be trained correctly. An animal that will bite when cornered. Bradley instinctively reaches up where the other boy's nails had grazed the side of his neck the other evening, the result of one of their more recent brawls. He didn't fear Schuldich himself, a child at the most.

But.

But the things that pass behind the red head's eyes (the shade of an autumn morning, he noted with a some amusement; Bradley had never been a poet, but occasionally a fitting metaphor surfaced in this mind) were what truly bothered the American. The darkness that flooded those Prussian pupils could have spent a shiver of alarm

(delight)

down even the most calm of men's spines. Bradley took a step into the crowd, feeling his lower back scrap against a young woman's hips.

Anna, age seventeen. Her boyfriend will die in a fight over a watch in two days--

Bradley brushes the images of his mind with a slight flick of his sore neck, half-pleased with the result. There was once been a time in this youth when going into such a crowded rave would have been painful; a thousand alternate futures would have assaulted his upper story and rung in his eardrums for hours on end. Now they are simply passing blurs, easily ignored.

Controlled.

Bradley loves control, loves the feel of a situation that is under his thumb. Bradley loves manila folders and neat notebooks upon whose pages are scribbled notes on how to act, what to bring…

Who to kill.

"You seem entertained," Bradley retorts blandly. At the very *least*, he adds mentally, not caring if Schuldich hears the cynical thought.

The cup of amber liquid he has lifted to his full lips muffles Schuldich's voice, but he still manages to smirk from behind the plastic container. "Yeah. It's hard not to be entertained by so many people who are smashed beyond belief."

"I suppose you like to come to places like this." Bradley means for it to be insulting, but it doesn't work as well vocally as mentally.

"Not as much as you'd think. It's fairly loud here." Schuldich takes a long sip of his drink, draining it completely. "I'm not a masochist."

"Could have fooled me."

Schuldich laughs, alcohol loosening his tongue. He may sneer, give the rest of the world condescending quirks of his lips, but the German youth rarely relaxes enough to chortle at much of anything that he actually finds amusing. "I'm a good actor."

"Too good." Bradley cocks his head towards the door. A thin stream of natural moonlight cuts across the floor, almost like a walkway they were meant to cross. "We're leaving," he says.

"And here I thought we were equals. What a pity." Bradley shots Schuldich a warning glare and begins to maneuver through the thick waves of people. He did not check to make sure the other boy was following him, he simply knows that Schuldich is trailing behind, grumbling as he tosses the paper cup that once held alcohol in its depths into the audience, a sort of farewell gesture.

Only Schuldich would say good bye to a place by *littering*.

I heard that Bradley. Schuldich slips in front of Bradley in a manor the American can only describe as feline, elegant

(can almost see Schuldich's rips separating as he slides against his hip)

and opens the door. He presses himself against it and dips down in a bow, one hand crossing over his chest while the other extends in Bradley's direction. "After you, Brad," he says, smirking. Bradley grunts out a thanks and takes his first step outside into the alleyway. The air is fresh, crisp in the dawning of the winter and rips down his throat with claws that tear at the delicate pink flesh. He suddenly wishes for the sun to rise, so as to spread his false warm upon Bradley's whitened cheeks like the kisses of smiling harlequins. A few trash cans loom ominously up from the snow covered earth like towers but the metal tins appear to the only thing that breaks into the frost covered side street. Behind him, Schuldich slams the door.

"Where do you want to go?" Schuldich asks, beside Bradley like some sort of shadow. "I have a feeling you don't want go club hopping anymore."

"Not really," Bradley says absently into the frigid breeze licking at the exposed skin of his cheeks. "And I don't want you to drink anymore," he continues. "You have meet SS tomorrow and—"

"Being hung over wouldn't exactly be the best first impression," Schuldich finishes quickly. "I know. I don't want to look like a lush or anything, since I doubt anyone at Rozenkreuz has any alcohol to spare."

"Intoxicating substances are banned," Bradley says. He almost laughs after he voices the sentence; it's so textbook dreary, so the Bradley Crawford he has been molded into. Training Schuldich (why that name, of all pen names he could have chosen) into an ideal student of SS would be a near impossible task, one that Bradley is pleased he will not have to see to. His duty was to collect the younger boy and bring him someone higher on the food chain.

Nothing more, nothing less.

"Figured as much," Schuldich says with a noisy sigh. "Stupid rules. We'd be better off without 'em."

"We couldn't live without some sort of rules. We need some sort of government."

Schuldich lets his lids drop, rolls his eyes around his skull in an exaggerated fashion, a childlike manor. Bradley can barely contain the laugh that threatens to burble like a spring through his numbed lips at the action. "We could live without government," Schuldich says.

"I don't think so. Human beings crave organization of one kind or another. You destroy one government and someone will build another one." Bradley momentarily prays that the subject will be dropped, but once flicker of Schuldich's eye tells him the topic is still of interest to the German.

"Government's fucked over one too many people. I mean, look at the fucking wall." Schuldich raises a thin finger to point beyond the trash cans towards the street. "I mean, look what government did to the people with a stupid block of concrete." Such typical, almost optimistic rational for a child who would only be sixteen in a few months.

Schuldich's no child…

Schuldich ignores the thought and tilts his head downward, one heavy boot lashing out at the snow. The heel scrapes against the uneven concrete with an unpleasant wail which both of them pay little mind to. "It's bullshit."

Bradley smirks. "I thought you hated people."

"I do."

"Then why are you saying that your old government was bad because it hurt people?" Bradley presses. He is almost interested in Schuldich's deranged philosophy, just as one might page through a mad man's journal with morbid engrossment.

"Well, it sure fucked things up for me." Schuldich's acrid snigger fills the air. "I mean, if I could have gotten out of here a few years ago I might have actually been able to do something with my life. I wouldn't have had to go to Rozenkreuz, summer camp for freaks of nature."

"Point," Bradley says with an almost chortle.

"You're overworked," Schuldich deviates once more from the subject at hand and looks with a half-lidded gaze at the American. "You're stressed out so fucking much."

"And why would you say that?" Bradley arches an ebony eyebrow above the thick frame of his glasses, lips tilting down in a slight frown.

"That was the first time I'd seen you laugh since we met two weeks ago. You're a really difficult person to entertain. You'll be a perfect student at Harvard."

"How did you know I was going there…" Bradley begins, then trails off.

Stupid question to ask of a telepath.

Schuldich tapped his forehead with a grin. "You think about going home all the time. You wonder what it's going to be if you decide to pay a visit to your parents—they leave near there, don't they?" Schuldich flicks his tongue across his cracked lower lip, which is still speckled with the sanguine lipstick of a girl whose mouth was solidly held captive by his own only a half-hour before. "God knows why you'd ever want to see your parents--"

"Can we leave family out of his discussion?" Bradley interrupts coldly.

"Oh. Well, if you don't want to chat about that, I'm sure I can find something more interesting to bug you about. What are you studying at Harvard? Actually, why is SS letting you go to college in the first place?"

"A new plan of theirs. If I become a member of a government organization I can hopefully twist things to make it easier for SS to carry out its goals."

Schuldich has no reply at first, then began in monotone. "That is the stupidest idea I've ever heard," he says flatly. "They're sending you all the way to the U.S. and paying for you to go to some expensive law school just so you can get work in some dusty old office? Isn't that sorta low for a field lieutenant?"

"I'm sure SS--"

Schuldich snorts. "Is me or are they afraid of you?"

"What?" The idea is a rather shocking notion

(revelation)

and one that tickles Bradley's brain, taunts his arrogance.

"Why else would they send you across the ocean?"

"SS trusts me," Bradley cuts in. "They're not afraid me."

Recognizing the snarl curling up on the corner of Bradley's mouth, Schuldich laughs. "Dropping the subject now."

"Good," Bradley says coolly.

I'm telling the truth. Bradley is not quite sure if it is Schuldich hissing the tempting words into his ear or his own temporally swelled ego, and does not care. Both are sirens, and he shall to deaf to whatever compliments they bestow upon him. Schuldich takes a few steps forward, still smiling widely. "Where are you going?" Bradley asks.

"I dunno. Wanna go back to the hotel?" Schuldich asks with a light shrug of his shoulders, sunset tinted hair slipping from its curled resting-place on top of them. "I mean, you keep saying we have to get up at some ungodly hour tomorrow morning so—"

Bradley taps the Rolex around his wrist with a slight smile. "It's already tomorrow morning," he says. Schuldich squints at the red letters burnt into the small machine in the darkness, tracing their forms quickly.

"So it is." He straightens up, adjusting the jacket around his lithe figure. "So."

"So."

The winter's breath fills the space between the words.

--Rei Maria. Boulder, August 2002