disclaimer: Weiss belongs to Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss and others
beta'd by Sybil Rowan
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Schuldig was expecting a glass coffin, a hedge of thorny roses, a tall stone tower. For the more modern girl, it might have been something to do with computers.
When he entered Aya-chan's mindscape he found himself in wild forest. Not the decorous pine forest of Grimms fairy tales, but one of massive tree trunks bare in winter. Vines coiled in wait like Balinese' garotte, and the undergrowth was a thick hedge. The thick silence seemed to be waiting for any noise, like a cat for a mouse's rustle.
'Must be a Japanese thing,' he thought. He looked around for where Aya-chan must think of herself as 'being'. Seeing nothing but wintering plants, he used his talent as he would in the waking world to feel for her.
He found himself sinking down through the earth. Through darkness anyway. This was too dead to think of as earth. Too cold. In his real body he didn't think he could have survived such cold.
Someone was there, in a chamber where a less intense shade of dark let him make out her silhouette. The mind he touched was Aya-chan's, from a further distance than she seemed. He reached out to touch her and she said, "You must not!" Her voice was unexpectedly normal, except a little tired. "That was reckless. As it was reckless to enter the real world by the front door."
"The real world?"
"This is the real world." That was not something any living man should hear.
"Your brother is real. His hope and need of you are real."
Her voice flattened more. It could have been strain. It made the hair on his spine bristle."Take care of him when he realises it's too late for me. He'll need you then."
"You're not dead! I can't talk to the dead. I tried so hard."
"Perhaps it's in my blood. Some of the kids at school enjoyed throwing the old stories at my brother. But they were dark old stories, not meant for fun. And I'm fully his sister."
"I don't know those stories."
"The Ainu weren't the only people living in these islands before the rice farmers." She breathed in, with effort. "I still have the love I bore my brother. I've kept that much of myself. If you want to return to him, I will show you the least dangerous way."
"I want to - " He hated to lose the dream of ushering his Aya into the hospital room to see his sister's eyes open.
"Hurry! Look to your right. There is one speck of light."
He strained his eyes and saw quite a blur of lights and colours from it. There was one not blurred.
She was saying in a voice like an old woman's, "There are still a few embers in that old fire. It will hold her back just long enough. If you go as fast as you can. Don't look back!" From behind her came a sound of movement. Something larger and softer than a human being.
He didn't look back. He was running too hard.