A Small Town in America

By Nix Winter

Chapter 3

Six months later

Aya turned the page, slender fingers gliding down the paragraphs until he found the part he was looking for. "Are you ready," he asked Youji, before he started reading.

It was the latest thriller, international terrorism and the pursuit of freedom, well done on both sides, and it ended satisfactorily. Aya knew. He'd read the end before deciding to read it to Youji.

Youji lay on his side, pillows supporting him. His hair was clean, pulled back in a ponytail, lips soft from frequently applied lip palm. Youji had lost muscle in the last six months, but not gained fat, not lost range of motion.

Aya's mission had moved from a sister he couldn't see for fear of contaminating her with his past, from an organization he didn't value, to caring for a man he did care for. He'd taken on a whole new identity here. Teacher by day, nurse/companion by night, and for the first time since his parents died, Aya Fujimiya was happy.

Youji had not woken, but Aya believed that he would. The only violence in their lives now was fictional, when Aya read to Youji, unless the time the cows had gotten out and ran through town during the barbeque. Maybe Aya believed that Youji would wake up so strongly because his sister had eventually woken up.

He wasn't sure when he went insane either, but he wasn't about to let a little insanity bother him now. He turned the page and continued reading, ignoring the pink haired delusion by the door.

"Oh come on! I know I'm not good at this, but you can't ignore me!" Shuichi whined. "I mean, you'd help me if you thought I was real, wouldn't you?"

"No, I would not," Aya said firmly, then continued reading. Someday he would have to get a competent psychoanalyst to help him understand why his subconscious would conjure up Shindou Shuichi, Japanese rock star, as an emissary of Judas Iscariot. The philosophical implications alone were really quite fascinating. "Sorenson pressed himself to the wall, heat from the barrel of his gun warming his chest. There were only five more."

"Oh don't read that part! I haven't read it yet." Shuichi whined more, stuck where all polite and uninvited apparitions would but, just outside the door.

"Then go away," Aya snapped, "Or I will tell you the ending."

"You're mean!" Shuichi shivered, emotion flicking off him like he was a wet dog. "Don't you care about anyone except yourself?"

"Did I ask you to come here and prove that I'm insane? Well? Did I? No. I didn't. I don't want to work for Judas. I don't believe in Biblical stories. I don't believe in gay pink haired rock stars. And didn't you die in a building cave in anyway?"

"Oh," Shuichi's eyes filled with tears. "I didn't die! Yuki saved me. Don't you believe in different worlds? I'm telling you, I know you as a fire demon. And he," Shuichi pointed at the comatose Youji, "He's got big black wings. He's real nice. Got a nice voice and he loves you very much."

"And you accuse me of being mean," Aya slammed the book closed, fury rising, he flung the poor book across the room. "Get out! Leave me alone! You accuse me of being mean? What of you? Cruel. Youji didn't love me! That's why he left me. Get out!"

"But he does love you," Shuichi said, leaning forward, hands on his knees, hair so bright it could be pink fire. "He was here on this mission to buy you both free. Youji loves you in many worlds. There is a war between good and evil that has been building forever. It is like to matched dragons and there can be no winner, only more death and rebirth. We want a different way."

Aya's eye twitched. "You're insane."

Shuichi crossed his arms, glared. "Fine. I. Wouldn't. Help. You. I'll go away. Even if I were just a figment of your dreams, the way you think the Youji in your dreams is, don't you think your subconscious would be creating me for a reason?"

"Self hatred?" Aya suggested.

"What if I'm here because you love Youji too, and that love is what's going to make the world sane? Why can't you at least listen to me?"

"Because I've read giving into delusions will only make them grow?"

"Look you jerk," Shuichi said, stepping into the room decisively. "I'm not a delusion or a ghost. I'm a person."

"Then why can't anyone see you? Why do you only come to me when I'm alone?" Aya said wishing he did believe somehow in spirits or something that he could use to protect himself and Youji.

"You are the most bookish of all the Aya's I've ever meet!" Shuichi walked across to the book. "At first, I didn't understand all of this either. I'm just a singer, you know? Not like some warrior or smart person. Yuki understood it more, and he told me to stay way from it. But then Yuki got cancer and Touma made me an offer. And Yuki accepted service with Judas because he was afraid I'd accept Touma's offer. Then Touma got mad and I can't find my way home."

Aya did not know these people, Yuki, Touma, Judas. He didn't want to know them. "Then why don't you go find your way home. I expect your Yuki is waiting for you."

"But I can't find my way home. The me in this world is mean! He and Yuki work for the pure dragon and they tried to kill me!"

"I can't say as I blame them," Aya said, but then, a little remorse crept in. Maybe he wasn't insane, maybe he was just a medium. He'd seen odder things working for Weiss. "Okay, so you're a spirit and you're lost. Why do you think I can help you?"

"You can help me because you're Aya Fujimiya," Shuichi said, as if that made all the sense in all the worlds. "And because I can help you. You think he left you, that he didn't love you because the vile dragon's angel is making you think that. He's so man, that man with red hair. He's the one that's keeping the black angel from waking up. I'll show you where he is. You can make him stop, then the black angel will wake up and you can both help me find my way home."

That sounded like coloring with a firecracker, but it made Aya think. "Schuldig? Schuldig is doing this to Youji? And you know where he is?"

The memory snapped so clear then, of Youji's birthday, of telling him he loved him. They did love each other. Youji had never left him. "So me where he is. I'll make him stop."

"Okay!" Shuichi bounced! "Yes! I knew you'd listen to me!"

In a shadowed corner, a Schuldig specter held Youji's spirit, one arm across his chest, the other hand over his mouth. "Soon I'll have more pets, then you wouldn't be lonely anymore, my kitty. Lovely little kitties to play with!"