Chapter 5: Memory Set to Music
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Crawford was stowing his briefcase into the trunk of his car when he heard a plastic click. He looked in. A CD jewel case lay tucked against the side. He picked it up and looked at the cover. "Rammstein," he muttered. The ugly baby in formaldehyde was instantly recognizable to him. For some reason, the cover bothered him. That's probably how the band sells records. Making people take notice, in bad ways as well as good. He opened the case to reveal the black disk inside.
It was Schuldig's. Farfarello hadn't cared for music, Nagi listened to Japanese and English bands, and he only listened to classical. He closed the trunk and got behind the wheel. The black BMW started up like a purring kitten. Germany may produce misfits like Schuldig and odd bands like Rammstein, but they made some of the best cars.
He slid Schuldig's CD into the CD player and listened to the opening swell of music from the first song. Not bad. It wasn't Stravinsky, but it wasn't bad. He winced when the singer started to sing. No opera, this. But he had tolerated worse, living with a teenager and Schuldig.
He let the singer's German flow over him like a tide. He chuckled at as he translated the lines, Ich will jeden Herzschlag kontrollieren. Ich will eure Stimmen hören, Ich will die Ruhe stören—'I want to control every heartbeat. I want to hear your voices, I want to disturb the peace.' No wonder Schuldig had three copies of this CD. It suited him very well.
It was strange hearing someone other than Schuldig speaking German. He knew German, could speak it fluently, had even lived in Germany for a while. But when he thought German, he thought Schuldig. Anything German would make him think of Schuldig. Which was strange, because Schuldig was not the stereotypical German. Schuldig wasn't the stereotypical anything. None of them were.
Not just German things made him think of Schuldig. He seemed to have the telepath on his mind lately. If he saw a flash of a green coat, he would turn to look, even though he knew that the green coat was in his closet at home. A glass of wine made him think of wines they had shared. Schuldig had always insisted that German wines were the best. Red sports cars made him think of the telepath, as well as morning papers and his morning coffee. Schuldig had brought in the paper for him many a morning. Conversely, on as many mornings he had filched Crawford's second cup of coffee.
This was no good. Tokyo was a big place. Unless you made an effort, you might never see someone again. He needed to face facts. Schuldig and Nagi were gone. Maybe he hadn't seen the end of Schwarz, but that didn't mean couldn't have happened, either. He didn't see everything. He needed to get on with things. He flipped open his cell phone and punched in a number.
"Mr. Sonett? I'll take your offer. I'll meet you in Los Angeles tomorrow evening."
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Schuldig sat up in bed, wondering what woke him. Reflexively, he looked at the clock. It was twenty after midnight. He had gotten to bed fifteen minutes ago. No more late nights for him. He worked nine to five now. "Scheisse," he snarled. He hadn't been sleeping well at all for weeks now. What had woken him? Something was wrong. What? He looked around. Everything looked fine here. He didn't care enough about his job to be worrying about that.
He threw the covers aside and shuffled over to Nagi's room. The door was cracked open to allow Jei to come and go as he pleased. Schuldig pushed the door open a little wider. He felt strange peeking in on the boy. He wasn't a paternal type. However, Nagi was his responsibility now. Jei looked up and silently yawned, but Nagi slept peacefully on. Everything was fine there. So what was it?
He did a circuit of the apartment, checking the windows and locks. Everything was fine there, too. Then he realized what was wrong. It was what was missing. Crawford. Crawford was gone. He may have been on the outside of Crawford's shields, but he had known they were there, like pressing a palm against a wall. Now the wall was no longer there, and what it had been surrounding was gone with it.
Dead? No, not dead. He would have felt that more jarringly. Just. . . gone. Back to America, most likely. He sat down against the wall outside Nagi's room and wrapped his arms around his knees. Now he was truly on his own. What was he going to do now? Crawford wasn't supposed to leave. Now he really was falling, this time without a net. And it was a long, long way down.
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Schuldig sat against the wall for nearly two hours, his mind slowly accelerating from frozen-numb shock to bullet-train-speed panic. This is a non-stop trip, ladies and gentlemen. Next stop, nervous breakdown. Please stay in your seats and don't block the aisles. He laughed nervously. Finally the thoughts bouncing around in his skull drove him to action. He scooped up his keys from their hook beside the front door and bolted from the apartment.
A still-dispassionate part of him wasn't surprised to see that his destination was Schwarz's old house. He slammed the front door shut and locked it with trembling fingers once inside. Giving the kitchen a wide berth—oh please, oh please, I can't deal with memories of Farf tonight—he raced down the hall. He turned left out of instinct and found himself in his old room. A little mewling cry escaped his lips at the sight of the shut closet door. He felt like a child again, expecting monsters to be hiding in the closet.
Even though logic told him otherwise, he was certain that if he opened the closet, he would see Farfarello in there, cut to pieces by the boat's propellers, staring at him accusingly. His eyes locked on the closet, he scrabbled madly for the exit. Long seconds later he found it and wrenched the door open, stumbling and falling on his ass doing so. His bruised tailbone didn't even register. He scrambled back until he slammed against the door across the hall.
The door popped open, tumbling him into the room. A low moan came from him when he saw where he was. Farf's room. He did not want to be here. No, no. Not at all. This was worse than the closet. A choked, animal keen came from Schuldig's throat. He didn't want to be here. He didn't know where else to go, though. He crawled out into the hall and huddled against the wall. Where to go? Was there nowhere for him to go? He looked up and laughed. The answer was in front of him all along.
He pushed himself up to his knees, then staggered to his feet. He wrapped his hand around the doorknob, hesitated. He wasn't supposed to be here. Yet where else could he go? He entered Crawford's sanctum. He was expecting, hoping that Crawford was there. The room was empty, except for one mentally battered telepath. His stress from the night caught up with him all at once. He couldn't say why, but the moment he crossed the threshold, the panic-storm passed.
Here, he felt. . . safe. He collapsed on the bed, face first. It had been stripped of sheets and pillows, but he still caught the faintest whiff of Crawford's aftershave, his soap, his very skin. Soothed by the whisper of scent, he fell into a deep, nightmare-free sleep, his first since Farfarello had died. However, it was not dreamless.
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A/N:
Scheisse – "Shit" in German.