It was a dark place, wherever he was at.
They'd caught him, sitting in the hotel room. Drawn to him by the smell, like flies. He hadn't bothered to fight, he hadn't bothered to do anything. He just sat there while they arrested him. He was still as they pinned his arms to his back, secured him. He just stared in front of himself, amazed at the sight of black hair and blood.
There had been one point, one brief moment that made him rock back in horror, when he thought that the knife he was using to kill the man in front of him was actually sinking into his own flesh. He thought, briefly, that he was accidentally attempting suicide again.
His left arm had a ghost ache, by the time he was done.
And he couldn't stop thinking about Crawford, and how much he wished Crawford loved him back.
He could have easily found Crawford and Nagi and Farfarello. That wouldn't have been a problem at all.
But they'd left him.
And that changed everything.
And he smiled, but not with amusement, only out of reflex.
He wasn't bothering with movement, right now. The city was slowly pressing down on him, slowly making him insane. And he missed Crawford so much he felt he'd die.
He closed his eyes every few minutes and told himself, "I don't need him."
But every time he said it, it seemed to only confirm that he did.
He simply didn't feel like running away. It didn't matter, anyways.
Killing two people wasn't a big deal anymore. There was no press, no stories in the newspaper, no snippets on the daily news. He was just some crazy guy who killed two homosexuals.
They'd taken his clothes away. Searched his body. They gave him a suit of loose cotton, strikingly different from anything a person could possibly wear in public. It made him stand out. If he did escape, anyone could look at him and know he'd run away from someplace official, even if they'd never seen a prison uniform. After the trial, they'd probably cut his hair, he guessed.
He hated the cotton prison suit. All the clothes he's had since Schwarz were tailor made for his long frame, and this suit barely reached his ankles, and was too loose. In order to cover most of him up, they'd given him a suit for someone much fatter than he actually was. But since the whole of Japan was generally shorter than him, it simply didn't fit. And the cotton was cheap, and paper smooth against him.
What they had turned into a big deal was his identity, his nationality. He spoke Japanese perfectly, but he spoke German, English, Spanish, and a few other languages without inflection. They couldn't find records, they couldn't find documents, they searched every records room they could. They had yet to take blood tests, swab DNA samples from his mouth, but the thumb prints were taken right away.
Nothing, no ideas, but they all figured it was only a matter of time before they knew who he really was.
When they asked him his name, he changed it every time. That amused him. They asked him his name so much, he started to have trouble inventing new names. He touched the minds of everyone in the building, at least once. Found the ones in power, made the tapes of him conveniently vanish, erase, or focus on the wrong person.
"Snow White."
"That's a storybook name."
He made a gesture with his hand.
The man with the very thin wire frame glasses frowned at him, glowered, and attempted to be polite. This whole damn country was so polite. "So, sir. I ask you once again, what is your name?"
Schuldich closed his eyes and smiled at the ceiling, "I told you, my name is Hatter, Mad."
The official that made eye contact with him wasn't amused at all. A sharp and aggravated sigh, and the man pushed his glasses up his nose and frowned at him. "I'll ask you one more time, and then I'm just going to be done asking."
"Okay, I admit it, my name is Prince Adolph."
And that was it, the man sat up and his mouth came to form a very flat line, and he was frustrated at his glib nature and disgusted at his crimes. "Well, I suppose I'll just write down anything." And he started to write. "You'll get life anyways."
"Well then, I suppose all I am is guilty." And he laughed, comfortably.
He'd never officially existed, before. The idea that he was filed away somewhere, it disoriented him.
When they'd taken the mug shot, he was bothered. He'd only had his picture taken a few times in his entire life, and that was usually to create a fake life.
He had no cellmate. The room was very small. It was night, it had to be. It was night, and Schuldich felt lost. The hum of a building full of voices kept him company. A million electric bees.
Fancy that, he thought to himself, a few of them are actually innocent.
A door opened down the hallway, sent a stream of fake light in, hurt Schuldich's eyes. Footsteps were heard, and as Schuldich listened, he realized that the steps he was hearing were simply too long to be Japanese. He'd never met a Japanese man that tall. And then he became aware of the footsteps of two other people, heard the thoughts of the escorts, the entourage following. Like a fairytale, from old times, walking very briskly down the hall, he could feel the empty space in the hive around him.
A silent prince.
Schuldich closed his eyes and smiled.
When the cell door slid open with a warning sound, and Crawford stepped in, Schuldich was looking at him with half slit eyes.
"Good evening, I'm here to take a blood sample."
"Are we going to play doctor?" He smiled sweetly, and didn't bother to sit up in his cot.
Crawford was wearing the traditional white of a doctor, long coat, case. Flanking him were two security guards. One was thinking about how Schuldich better behave, or he was going to have his pretty teeth broken in. The other was hardly paying any attention at all.
"Sit up please."
"Roll over, beg. Come on Fido, you can do it." And Schuldich showed the guard his pretty teeth, baring them just a little bit.
Crawford's eyes didn't move in amusement, either. He was doing a very good job at seeming to be a very normal man. A mild mannered doctor. Smooth black hair, little sliver rimmed eyeglasses, dusty creased dress shoes. Schuldich wondered how much it pained Crawford to wear shoes that old.
But he sat up, held out his left arm. "Take my blood, then."
Crawford set down a case on the floor, opened it and pulled out the hypodermic, and a rubber cord. He placed the hypodermic where he could reach it, and held out his hand expectantly. Looked up at Schuldich first with his eyes, then the rest of his face. Crawford's hand closed around his left wrist, and a finger gently smoothed across the scar there. A little too gently, almost a caress. Schuldich wanted to put his arms around Crawford, wanted to be taken away from this place.
"Better use the right arm."
And Crawford took his right arm, tied the cord around his arm, tightly, waited for the blood to store up to be drawn. The cell was incredibly silent.
"Is it normal, to draw blood at night?"
"I had better things to do, then come and draw blood from a murderer."
The guards behind Crawford smirked.
When Doctor Crawford deemed it the right time to draw blood, he pressed the needle to the skin, and drew the blood out. He watched his blood enter the chamber, rhythmically, one hard pulse, one softer.
Then Doctor Crawford made eye contact with him, a cordial smile at his lips. "Have a good evening."
And he left.
Simple as sin, he was gone, and Schuldich reclined in his cot. He wondered what was going to happen next, now that he knew that Crawford knew he was here.
At twenty-two hundred hours, at ten o'clock p.m., the nameless murderer had a heart attack.
The best way to make a person disappear is to kill them.
He woke up gasping for breath in the back seat of the car. His lungs felt as though they'd been completely emptied. His mouth was full of a taste he absolutely hated, he wanted to gag, and he couldn't focus his eyes as perfectly as he was used to.
"Sssh, calm down." A deep bass voice. A hand at his cheek.
Schuldich was disoriented.
"What happened?" He managed to say, and his tongue felt dry.
"I killed you."
And Schuldich realized that Crawford was not driving the car, Nagi was. He wondered vaguely if Crawford ever drove the car.
He became aware of Farfarello's yellow eye, the pink scars on his face, the way he tilted and stared, transfixed. "Were you in hell?"
"No."
"God must have a sense of humor."
He fell asleep again.
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