Vicissitude
Author's Notes- This fic has eaten my head at the moment, kind of awkward considering how much else I have to work on at the moment. Even though there's not exactly much interest, I've got so much of it lying around that I put up some more anyway.
There's also a couple of inaccuracies since I wrote this while I was at home and didn't have my DVDs. I accidentally wrote Schuldig as killing Schon, and since that made its way into a couple of scenes it would be tricky to rewrite. I also wrote Tot as being 'dead' for at least an hour or two and partly buried with wreckages, which may be a slight dramatisation /
Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.
- - -
Nagi's apartment was unimpressive, but practical for someone looking to disappear into anonymity. He rented it furnished and paid cash on time each month. Tot had been posed as an older sister stuck raising her brother through his last two years of compulsory schooling after their mother had left the country with a new boyfriend. Not enough of a sob story for the landlord to get too interested, and just enough to keep things awkward and make sure he refrained from asking too many questions. None of their neighbours were interested in who they were or where they had came from. Tot never left the apartment and Nagi had a gift for fading into the background when he wanted to.
There were only two bedrooms, but no one used the empty living room and Farfarello took it. There was a filmy layer of dust over the TV screen and the single, scarred coffee table wasn't marked by rings of spilled tea or stacked with newspapers and correspondence. The thin curtains had remained drawn since they had signed the contract, and when he opened them, more dust motes danced golden in the hall light, the view nothing more than the grey wall of an identical building almost close enough to touch. It was clear that no one had used this room since the previous occupants. Tot and Nagi kept out of each others way, only meeting awkward and silent as they passed between their separate rooms and the kitchen or bathroom.
"Here," Nagi said, appearing soundlessly in the doorway. He dropped a first aid kit on the sofa and indicated Farfarello's injured hand before leaving, closing the door silently behind him. Farfarello wound a bandage around it to keep it from staining anything, but didn't bother to clean the wound first. There were a few small noises around the apartment, doors opening and shutting, a tap running and lights clicking on and off, and then silence as they fell asleep separately, without talk.
- - -
Tot dreams.
The room she is in now is nothing like the room she used to have, the room of a girl less than half her age. Masafumi had indulged her and let her live as she pleased, and Schon and Hell had helped her decorate whenever a new whim took her. Her walls had been candystriped pastel pink and white and hung with paintings of fairytale scenes, all the princesses and knights and unicorns, and none of the dragons or witches. She had filled the room with pretty, impractical furniture and an enormous, four poster bed hung with wispy curtains barely more substantial than air. Tot had liked to surround herself with layers of sugary frills and spun lace, to wrap herself up in a flower-patterned blanket in a pile of cushions and stuffed animals in the safe pink cavern of her room. Nagi can't afford anything like that just yet. He had been surreptitiously leeching money from the Schwarz accounts for months and investing it, buying things to sell on, changing account after account. It had switched constantly from numbers on a computer screen to piles of hard cash, from stocks and shares to some physical investment piled in a warehouse, all so that the trail became cold long ago if anyone tried to follow up on it. He can't access very much of it at the moment, and so the flat they have now is sparse and bare. She doesn't mind too much. Once Tot would fear a place with white empty walls and thin grey curtains and nothing to cover all the empty space. But now she dreams, and goes back to the cherry trees in her sleep.
I'll be waiting..
Tot smooths down her pretty clothes, all tattered and torn as she dragged herself from the smoking wreckage of her home. Luckily, it wasn't one of her best outfits. Her daddy let her fill up entire wardrobes, so many clothes that when Hell threw out some to make space, she'd never even notice. This was an unusual choice for Tot, sleek and hugging her slim, toned figure. Usually she likes puffed dresses, knee-length skirts frothing with lace and tulle, blouses buttoned up to the neck. She'd seen the uncomfortable look on Hell's face when she'd chosen this one, an outfit she'd never have picked before meeting Nagi.
She knows she must look terrible now. Her clothes are ruined and stiff with her own dried blood. Her hair is disheveled and she pulled it away from her face in a messy ponytail because it smells like smoke and fire, and she doesn't want to think about that just yet. Her bare skin is bruised and raw with grazes, and her nails are splintered and broken down to the quick. Tot doesn't even care. She thinks Nagi would like her better this way, not a dressed-up doll any more.
It's pretty here, under the cherry blossom. Tot isn't sure where it is, a park or a private garden maybe. But if she doesn't look too hard, she can pretend they're the cherry trees back in the mansion grounds and that any minute now an exasperated Schon will come out from under that heavy blossom looking for Tot, Schon before Weiss had scarred her pretty face and Schwarz had put a bullet through her chest. The grass isn't clipped and it runs luxuriant through her fingers when she brushes her hands through it and picks daisies to make into chains. She's been here a while now, and there are ropes and ropes of flowers winding round her neck and wrists and waist, here so long that some of the petals have already wilted and died.
Dying was very scary.
She unconsciously brushes her fingertips against the tiny slit in her clothing. Underneath, there's nothing but a tiny white raised spot, as insignificant as an insect bite. Tot has worse scars on her knees and elbows from falling over as a child. But it's still undeniably there, whenever she tries to find another explanation for what had happened back at the mansion. Tot had died. She couldn't clearly recall how things had happened, because there was too much confusion. Schon was dead and Masafumi was gone, and one second she was running blindly up the stairs to confront Schwarz and the next she was cut down in her tracks, falling downstairs with her limbs tumbling lifelessly like one of her dolls.
It didn't even hurt so very much. Tot is no stranger to pain, and the adrenaline had numbed her. For a second, she lay there disorientated and then tried to lift her head to see what was going on, but her body wasn't responding any more. All she could feel from the wound was a tiny, sharp pain every time her heart pulsed, no more painful than a stitch after hard exercise, but then she felt blood washing warm over her with each contraction and knew she was dying. Strange, the thing that saddened her most was seeing how upset Nagi was. It almost looked as though he was crying, but Tot couldn't see any more. Her own eyes were blurring up and the world beginning to slide out of focus. She wanted to tell him it was okay, that she had been dead for a very long time anyway, but the words didn't come. None of that romantic nonsense, no tearful speeches or heartfelt whisperings or confessions, just a few clumsy words that took her forever to shape.
They're all gone now.
A stray breeze whips through the cherry blossom and a shower of petals dance around her like butterflies, whispering silky smooth against her skin. She looks around without thinking, but Tot is alone and it's nothing but the wind this time. He came for her once, like this, when Neu had died. Hell and Schon and Neu. She keeps forgetting about it and letting the thought drift away with the cherry blossoms, and play pretend once again, but Tot thinks that perhaps now she can cope with it. She is an assassin and well acquainted with death, but it's different when it's Neu choking her life out on a loop of wire, Schon's lovely face distorted with pain, Hell cradling Masafumi until the world came down around her.
Did Nagi die?
She chews her lip, uncomfortable. When Tot woke up, she didn't even think about Nagi. It was horrible. She remembers nothing about what happened after she died, but she remembers her mind slowly awakening and trapped in the lifeless organic cage of a corpse. Tot could feel everything- her limbs stiffening like doll parts, her brain beginning the slow process of breaking down back into its components, fluids beginning to settle and turn to gel in her veins. She would have screamed and screamed until her voice was gone, but the message was lost somewhere in a tangle of dead nerve fibres that didn't respond any more. Then the changes had began to occur, painfully slow. Her blood began to flow again, sluggishly, cells separating from where they had settled in clumps in her veins. She could feel a small blush of warmth slowly spreading through her chilled flesh, her tiny heart thumping irregularly under the will of someone else. At last her lips had parted and she gasped for air.
She hadn't thought about anything once she awoke, not Nagi, not Schon or Hell. She clawed her way out from under the ruins, her nails breaking and bending backwards as she scrabbled desperately at stone and wood with bleeding, skinless fingertips. There was no air down there and she breathed in dust and ashes, and choked them back out as she dragged herself painfully from the wreckage and finally lay out in the air, weak and trembling. Her stiffening muscles slowly began to unknot and fill with warmth, until she could stand unsteadily, as awkward as a newborn foal. The only thing in her newly awakened mind was to escape and she had limped slowly away, confused and hurting.
I'll protect you
Tot doesn't need protecting. Tot is an assassin. Her daddy took her in and by the time he was through teaching her, no one could ever hurt her again. And yet, this strange boy, two years younger and three inches shorter than her had sworn he would protect her. She clasped her hands together. She could kill him so easily. Nagi is safe, small and vulnerable. There's a lot of power locked away inside his head, but she knows he would never turn that on her.
Tot slips back out of REM sleep, and her dreams disintegrate into a whirl of cherry blossom petals.
- - -
Nagi dreams, most nights.
His dreams are the only place where he really loses control, and they leave him faintly uncomfortable when he wakes up, sometimes with cooling tears caught like diamonds in his eyelashes and shattering as he blinks them away. Crying feels unfamiliar to him now. Nagi has practised the art of locking everything up tight until his feelings crystallised and turned to nothing but cool, complete disregard for everything. Or so he thought. A slight frown crosses his face momentarily. Nagi always played his cards close to his chest and planned each and every move, but Tot is an unknown factor, a wild card in this game he found himself playing.
He had watched countless people lose their lives to Schwarz and never felt anything before. Living on the streets had taught him this brutal philosophy, that in the end everyone stood alone and that if you could not keep your own life, then you had no right to it. He had learned that his own safety could only be guaranteed by the sight of a target crushed and broken on the floor, by street gutters running red with blood. He had witnessed the deaths of both assassins and civilians, men, women and children. He had seen Schuldich and Farfarello wreak havoc on those who could not possibly defend themselves, for no reason other than their own entertainment, and he felt nothing. He had personally killed a harmless, middle-aged businessman who had done Schwarz no harm except to own some investment they required and probably could have acquired by other, more tiresome means. He felt no regret, not even when the man's dying spasms knocked the family photos from his desk, three children and a wife, five lives destroyed with a single thought from Nagi's inexplicable mind. Life was unfair.
He hadn't cared about any of the other Schrient members, and if Crawford had given the word, he would have finished them in any way their leader had pleased. He didn't care for Hell's sharp mind, for Schon's beauty, for Neu's tragic little psychodrama. They were nothing to him. Nagi had slipped up, and he won't let it happen again. He'll keep his promise to Tot and keep her with him, away from any dangers they may undoubtedly attract, but it goes no further than that. He let himself care about her, only to see her cut down in front of him.
Sometimes when he sleeps, everything slips and he's back on the street.
The scene is always the same. It's no street in particular. The street of his nightmares is an amalgamation of every street he has ever known, but the alleys are darker and deeper and there's always broken glass in the gutter and sirens in the air. Everything seems slightly surreal and all the proportions are wrong. The buildings stretch to the skies and every window is black and broken, the people all loom over him and their expressions are grotesque exaggerations like Greek theatrical masks. It's how his child-self remembers things.
It's always night too. Day brought its own problems, either laughter or pitying looks, and he hates both equally. At least the people who talk about him come out and say it. They don't murmur false sympathy and then look the other way, knowing the child they pity could be dead in an alley the next morning. But night is when the drunks and drug addicts are out, and no one around to hear a thin, lost scream in the middle of all the city noise. There's always the sound of heavy rain running down gutters, and then his memories with Schwarz fade away and he remembers skinning knees running away, hiding behind the thin shelter of a few cardboard boxes soft with rain and watching neon lights swim in puddles as he struggles to control the strange, surging force inside his own head.
But not tonight. Another loose end has been tied up and the Berserker has been found. His face relaxes momentarily in sleep as the streets break up and fade away before they've properly formed, and in the morning, he does not remember dreaming. Of course, it must have occurred. Anyone watching would have seen the signs of REM sleep, his breathing become lighter and faster and tiny movements flickering under his eyelids, but they were shallow and meaningless dreams that slipped away easily and formed no memories.
- - -
Farfarello dreams too.
The dreams are as erratic as his thought usually are and they leap around between space and time, but they always take him back to the tower's fall in the end. They start as the floor begins to crumble and break up, and the most frightening part is seeing that for once, Brad Crawford looks completely taken aback. Crawford was never shocked. He built his plans for the future in layers, laying down safeguard after safeguard. There were no wild cards or uncontrolled factors in Crawford's games, not until this time when the world around them began to buckle and cave in on itself, and everyone was plunged into madness.
Farfarello had hit the water awkwardly and went straight under. It took him a while to surface from the vortex down there, the foaming water filled with corpses and crumbling foundations and the living being dragged down with it. He struggled out of the madness over and over again, and never got there in time before Schuldig's mind snapped to see what happened.
The dreams break up and reform, over and over. As Farfarello slips in and out of REM sleep they start again and flash between the past, the tower and the following days, and Schuldig's face goes back and forward into and out of ruin.
"Hello, Farfarello,"
The madness briefly ceases and Schuldig's image flickers for a moment, then settles. He looks as he did not so long ago, just before they left for the tower incident. A little tired, with dark smudges under his eyes and paler than usual from the work it took to pull their plot off, but unharmed. There's a faint touch of colour in his skin from a still-beating heart, and both eyes are there, as bright and focused as ever.
Schuldig looks alive, but his kiss is thin and brackish and as cold as the ocean.
"Sorry," Schuldig says, touching his lip thoughtfully. There's still a small scab there from a cold sore he had just before the tower incident. It's not some image generated from all Farfarello's jumbled memories, an amalgamation of every memory he has, but Schuldig exactly as he was less than three weeks ago. "I can't remember the taste of anything but saltwater down there,"
"You're dead," He says, and remembers.
"Yeah, I noticed that too. Well, I'm here and that's the important thing," Schuldig says, unmoved. "Now listen. They've sent people after you,"
"Eszet?"
"Who else?" Schuldig shrugs. "No one in Eszet has followers who were loyal to the end, not even the Elders. But there are plenty there who would take advantage of the chaos to seize power for themselves, and Schwarz are a threat to them. The Oracle might win over the remainder yet, but-"
"How did they know?" Because surely Brad Crawford wouldn't go up to the remains of the organisation to tell them what happened, and all the witnesses that matter were drowned. Weiss may have crawled from that wreckage too, but even if they run to their masters, Kritiker would keep it to themselves. If there are traitors in Eszet, it only benefits Kritiker if the organisation ruins itself from the inside without ever knowing who brought them down.
Schuldig's smile is thin and bitter. "They had a safeguard, Far. They never really trusted us-"
Schuldig was cut off abruptly. His sharp, fox-like features began to swell, turning white and shapeless. His brilliant blue eyes disappear between blinks, nothing there now but something small and and tentacled curled up in the ruins of his brain.
"Do you like it?" A childish voice pipes up.
"Who are you?" Farfarello asks. Schuldig was still trying to speak, but there was seaweed tethering his jaws together and water had flooded his mouth and left his lungs stuck together like sodden tissue paper.
She appears, smoothing down a tattered white dress that looks more like some kind of nightgown. He has a feeling she is much older than she looks, but something has stunted her growth and she looks like a child forever now. Under the flimsy dress, she is little more than skeletal. Her hair is colourless and flows like seaweed, and when she looks up he sees her eyes are clouded white and sightless. Something is subtly wrong about every facial feature, everything slightly unformed.
"I am fear," She says.
"Then you'll have to try harder," Farfarello says indifferently, glancing over her handiwork. He would never fear Schuldig, however he appeared. "You're just a mad telepath, aren't you?"
She giggles, but it's brittle and mirthless. "He's right, you know. You're in trouble,"
"We killed the elders," Farfarello agreed. "I was talking to Schuldich. Go away,"
An angry look crosses her face, and suddenly everything shatters around him.
- - -
He woke up abruptly, thrown straight from the middle of the dream and back into the dry, empty little living room in Nagi's flat.
There were three things wrong. Firstly, there was no Schuldig there. He was still used to the telepath sprawled lazily over wherever he pleased. Schuldig might have enemies everywhere, but he slept as though he didn't have a care in the world, in an untidy tangle of long limbs and loose hair. It was deceptive. Farfarello had seen how quickly Schuldig would come awake at an unfamiliar noise.
Secondly, the wall in front of him was a nicotine-stained off-white and not the bland cream of the expensive apartment Schwarz had rented. The air had a dry, unused scent like carpet cleaner and air freshener. Their apartment had a smell that was something between the coffee Crawford and Nagi had lived on, Crawford's expensive aftershave and a hint of cigarette smoke from Schuldig. The furniture was unfamiliar too. If Farfarello woke up in his own room, there was none there now. If he woke up in Schuldig's, there were his own few possessions amongst all the junk Schuldig collected, piles of books he would never read, obnoxiously bright clothes thrown over every surface, expensive electrical gadgets he got bored with and left on the floor until they were broken.
And third, the wound in his palm was infected. It was an unfamiliar sensation to him. Farfarello could feel all the signs of inflammation except for the pain- the heat and throbbing dilated blood vessels, a slight stiffness in that hand from swelling. He tugged the bandage loose, and a black sandy crust was ripped free with the gauze, exposing a red swollen slit in the centre of his palm. A few drops of clear fluid welled up when he pressed on it experimentally. Lymph fluid, some already dried to a white crust around the wound.
He was familiar with signs of infection, just never in himself. Farfarello was a vitakinetic. Theoretically, it could be a useful gift. Rosenkreuz had spoken excitedly of almost instantaneous healing powers, of enhanced strength and regenerating from perhaps only a certain percentage of his original cells, of the ability to turn the gift on others to hurt or to heal. But like most gifts, it didn't work that way at all. It was erratic and under no conscious control. Sometimes he'd survive supposedly fatal wounds. On one memorable occasion he'd been flattened by a truck and Schuldig had later sworn it had gone over his head ("I felt you go,"). A few seconds later and he was on the floor with the truck a few metres away, getting up unsteadily as the worst of the fractures knitted themselves together in seconds so he could get away before it returned. Maybe it had gone over his head. There had been a lot of things suddenly crunching and snapping, and he couldn't tell where they all where.
Other times, a simple cut could remain raw and open for days, and weeks before the scar would fade. Sometimes they didn't go at all. His eye had never healed and there were numerous scars that had never disappeared. Crawford hypothesised he had some sort of mental block regarding them, and that he could heal them if he wanted to. Farfarello didn't care whether they were there or not.
He went into the kitchen. Nagi was already there.
"Schuldig said there's someone after us," Farfarello said. There were three cups laid out ready. They were an interesting choice. Practical and unsentimental, Nagi should have picked up a pack of four matching cups that were neither cheap and gaudy, nor too expensive. Instead, they were all different and probably picked from a 100 yen store. There was a tall coffee glass almost identical to Crawford's, a brightly coloured patterned mug like the one Schuldig had favoured, a black cup as Nagi had always used, and the fourth was fairly similar to one Farfarello had usually picked.
"Schuldig is dead," Nagi said wearily. He could see the telekinetic mentally making a note to get Farfarello back on anti-psychotics.
"I know," Farfarello took a seat and pulled his cup over towards himself. "He looked it too,"
Nagi looked up at that, opened his mouth as though about to comment, and shut it again. He went back to telekinetically typing out something on his laptop, forehead creased with concentration and then his eyes flickered back up. "What happened to your hand?"
"Knife," Farfarello said.
"I know that," A tiny sign of irritation crossed Nagi's face. "Why is it infected? That's never happened before,"
Farfarello turned his hand back over and pressed down on the infected site, and shrugged. He watched another round, pearly bead of lymph fluid rise up and the sides of the split parted, revealing the angry red insides.
"There was someone else with Schuldig," He said. "Eszet?"
"You didn't go out last night, did you?" Nagi rubbed his temples as though easing an oncoming headache, and waited for Farfarello's nod to confirm it. "Then there was no one there. Take care of your hand,"
Farfarello wasn't offended. He dabbed at the remainder of the scab, dug out a few grains of glittering sand from the edge of the wound and then doused it in antiseptic and rebandaged it, watching Nagi all the time. The boy looked more like Crawford than ever now, eating with one hand while hard at work with the keys of his laptop rapidly depressing themselves under his gaze. The gunfire sound of typing was suddenly interrupted by a scuffling noise at the door, and then the sound of quickly retreating footsteps.
Nagi put his spoon down impatiently. "Tot," He said. The footsteps paused. "Come in here,"
Tot entered the kitchen reluctantly, her eyes flickering everywhere but to Nagi or Farfarello. Nagi indicated a chair and she crossed the kitchen slowly, like a lamb to the slaughter. She wasn't wearing any of her usual outfits now, just jeans and a top that was far too big for her, her hands fisted in the overly long sleeves. There were dark smudges underneath her eyes and her hair was tied up on top of her head in a messy blue knot.
"No one's going to kill anyone," Nagi said, pouring Tot some tea without looking away from the screen. Black tea, cream, three sugars, no need to ask how she took it. "I've been looking- seeing what we should do next. I thought we should get out of the country, but Eszet and Kritiker will probably be watching the planes. I thought about a ship, but-" He paused, his voice faltering. For a moment, he looked like the fifteen year old he was.
"We'd be trapped," Farfarello said agreeably. You can't keep a plane in the air indefinitely, but if someone alerted them, Eszet could stop a ship coming to shore. There was nowhere to escape from it.
"Exactly," Nagi said, regaining his composure somewhat. He stirred his tea briskly. "The main Schwarz account will be frozen, of course, but both Crawford and myself had a number of other accounts. There's no reason why we can't stay here indefinitely and lay low for a while," He paused, and then looked closer at his screen.
"What is it?" Tot asked.
"A message," Nagi said, the keyboard jumping into life under his outstretched hand, keys clattering away untouched. His voice sounded odd. "I think it's from Crawford,"