Disclaimer: Writing Blood+ makes me richer in spirit, and I don't know if you can sue for that.
Timeline: A year or two before Saya came back on the scene.
A/N: I don't even know what this is. It started out as a one-off comment ("Aww, ze mice like Karl." "He's probably been giving 'em candy or something.") and turned into something that isn't quite sinister, but makes me feel deeply uncomfortable nonetheless.
If Van ever finds out, he's going to have him skinned. Of that Karl is sure.
But Van isn't going to find out, and Karl is sure of that too. So he flashes his ID at the door, removes his glove so the computer may read his palm, and endures the retinal scan at the very start of the very last hallway beneath the south wing. Subject housing D is located near a medic's station; when the air begins to smell like cough syrup, it means he's close.
He gives the paper bag at his side a deliberate rustle, a sound he knows will carry and alert them to his arrival – sure enough, the voices down the hall begin to rise. Clamoring, anxious. It's a minor touch that they really do enjoy, which is why he only comes late on Sundays, when the security guards who know him well enough to forgo a bag check are on duty.
He locks the outer door behind him, makes his way through the narrow wing, through the inner door, and comes face to face with sixteen children. Most of them have been lifted from the Vietnamese countryside, sometimes purchased with the promise of a better life, but not one of them is a day older than ten.
"Good afternoon, my children!" he calls cheerfully, just as he does every time. And of course, most of them rush right to him on stockinged feet, malnourished little bodies dressed in clothes that don't quite match. The boldest ones tug on his ao dai.
"See!" One of them says, as loud as any five year old incapable of properly whispering. "I told you he would come again!" And Karl chuckles. Not for the first time, he wishes he knew all of their names.
"Of course I have. Do you want to know what I've brought for you today?"
"Cake?" guesses a small girl, the one with the slightest of accents. Karl thinks her name might be Katya or Kayla. Either way, he doesn't have the heart to remind her that he has never once brought them cake. All of this ends the day the doctors or cleaning staff find crumbs.
"No. Banana and coconut candy. It's one of my favorite kinds." And it is, too. From Phương Thảo; soft, rectangular pieces, half cocoa and half fruit. He remembers when it first hit the market shelves.
He sits down near the wall, near the box of faded, simple toys and books left out for the children – the kinds one finds in a pediatric waiting room. They all crowd around him, one of them taking his place squarely in his lap without invitation. As soon as the bag opens up with a tear and the room begins to smell of sugar, their palms go up like tiny beggars. Even the ones who are losing their taste for solid, human food accept a piece, just to roll the sweetness around in their mouths.
"I had to get a shot today," informs Vien, a boy with large, solemn eyes and closely cropped hair. With all the gravity of a pallbearer, he pulls up his sleeve to show off the place where a pinprick used to bruise purple and red, but now heals in mere minutes. "Right here."
"I see that," Karl says with a nod. An infusion of Delta 67, to be sure. "And you don't like shots, do you." Vien shakes his head, as do most of the other children sitting around him. "I can't stand them myself. But I used to have to get them all the time."
"And operations," a little girl adds on. She has only just started joining the circle around Karl and, from the hunched in way she carries herself, has seen more operations than the others. He passes her one of the larger candy pieces, almost too big for its own plastic wrapping.
"Yes, operations too."
"But you're asleep for an operation!" This comes from a blonde boy who sounds like he needs the reassurance.
"Also true. You're fast asleep, and that's why you don't feel a thing," Karl lies blatantly – of all his memories of Amshel's operating table, maybe three of them fade out at the scent of ether. That was Solomon's doing and he needs to thank him one of these days. But there's no reason these children need to know about any of that.
If they have any silver linings remaining, Amshel's lack of a hand in the Vietnam branch will be one of them.
They're unusually quiet today as they fall into the candy pieces, making Karl wonder if the testing trials have been increased. Normally, they're jostling for the chance to speak to a willing ear; who got in a fight with whom and which doctor said something mean. The girl leaning into his damaged shoulder worries away at her banana portion, thoughtful.
"Can we go outside?" she asks.
"Not today. It's going to storm soon," Karl replies, which may not be untrue. Storms come on quickly this time of year.
The girl stops rolling her candy.
"Oh."
On the other side of the room, where the dormitory style beds begin, is the usual congregation of children that remains unwilling to approach him. They rarely ever speak, so he can only guess at their exact reasoning, but it's not as though their suspicion isn't justified. Most days, he simply lets them be.
This afternoon, however, a new face catches his eye. A little brunette, too bright and healthy looking to be anything but a recent addition. Karl turns to the boy sitting near his knee.
"Who is that, over by the last bed?"
The boy glances in that direction. "Marceline."
He gives her a smile. "Hello, Marceline."
The girl shrinks back, eyes inching open wide, and Karl assumes that will be the end of their correspondence. But just as his mind turns to the plastic bag and the other, more pressing item located inside, a small voice pipes up.
"Où est Maman?"
He wonders what could have possibly brought her here; if the center is broadening their pool of test subjects so thoroughly as to risk an international incident or if they've just gotten careless. "Ne t'en fait pas mon cher. Ta maman reviendra bientôt."
But Marceline shakes her head, as though in denial of a horrible truth he has tried gently to bring to light. "Non! Je veux Maman! Je veux Maman!" The two older children beside her take her arms, muttering something inaudible between fearful, hateful glances at Karl. She tears away, grabs a pillow in her fist and pitches it halfway across the room at him, small shoulders trembling with the purest fury he has ever seen in a child.
"Je veux Maman maintenant! T'es le croquemitaine!"
And Karl wants to tell her that he hasn't put them in here. He isn't the one who took them from their beds, who ties them down and slides needles into their veins. This is Solomon's project, Van's, Amshel's.
This began long before any of them.
But Marceline has gone to crumple up behind the bed, hidden away from his view. He can hear the broken way she gulps the air, the thickness of her tears. Karl does the kindest thing he can possibly think of, which is to turn away from her. A chance to grieve without a dosage of Midazolam being forced.
Yes...he can do that much.
Quickly, he checks the faces of the boys and girls around him. In the earliest days of the study, when he first started coming to visit, any child crying would be enough to set them all off, but they don't bat an eye now. Some of them could sit down and view pictures of their families, their siblings and the paths they walked to school, and react with no more than a token shrug, if that. The doctors call it a coping mechanism; Karl suspects they're just too saturated with Delta 67 to care very much.
And in a way, he understands...there is, after all, a certain peace to be found even in the aftermath of something so terribly, earth-shatteringly wrong. One doesn't look back towards the darkness when there's so much light coming up over the horizon.
They know that their real mother lies elsewhere.
"Do you want to listen to our music, now?" he asks them, which is more a matter of routine than anything. Never once have they declined.
"The long one!"
"Play the one that goes high!"
"Please!"
Never even once.
From the bag at his side comes the miniature cassette player; a remnant of the last days she sang, almost thirty years ago. The mere thought of it causes his chest to tighten as he brushes his gloved fingers over the worn surface.
'Soon, please. Sleep well, and then...know that you're so very missed.'
But it doesn't hurt for long, not when he snaps down on the play button and lets her song fill the gray room, washing it with color, softening the sharp, sterile edges. For the first time, the eyes of the children brim with a light that no confection, no words of comfort could give them, a light that looks like home and family.
'Would that you could meet them, my Diva...'
And they begin to sing along.
First one child takes up the melody, then another and another still, until their sweet, humming voices have risen to a perfect unison with the haunting music. Ordinarily, Karl would never suffer another person to interfere with this song that rests so close to Diva's heart, but the children understand it so well; he can hear it every time they raise their voices in unison.
Of course they do. Of course he would. Chevalier or test subject, their blood is one and the same, their hope rests with the same person, and this too is something he can grant them all.
They will never be the ideal, Chiropteran soldiers the company wants; they will never be the children Diva dreams, that Karl dreams because Diva does so desperately.
But they can be this, just for now. And that can be enough.
The music swells until it sounds poised to shatter, but never does.
The test subjects relocate in a year's time.
Marceline has stopped crying.
And Karl closes his eyes, leaning into the wall as he gently hums along.
Où est Maman – Where is mama?
Ne t'en fait pas mon cher. Ta maman reviendra bientôt – Don't worry, my dear. Your mama will return soon.
Non! Je veux Maman (maintenant)! – No! I want Mama (now)!
T'es le croquemitaine – You are the mitten-biter. The mitten-biter is a French bogeyman.