Chapter Nine

"Mou, Yohji-kun," Omi protested, as Yohji flopped down in one of the kitchen chairs and lit up a cigarette. "It's half past noon, and you know you're not supposed to smoke in the kitchen." He glared over at Yohji from where he was cooking lunch. "You skipped work this morning and left Ken-kun in the flower shop all by himself, and you know we're stretched thin because Aya-kun can't get out of bed yet."

Yohji grumbled some response and started to smoke his cigarette faster, so he could put it out and Omi would stop complaining.

"I had to come home from school early because Ken-kun was swamped and couldn't even leave the store to get you up," Omi continued his lecture. "It's past noon! Why did you have to sleep so late?"

"I felt like it," Yohji replied.

Omi gave him a withering look. "You felt like it. Well, I'm sure Ken-kun didn't feel like being mobbed all alone."

"He can handle it," Yohji said.

"Yohji-kun, if you're going to keep doing this, I'll start getting you up before I leave for school," Omi said, glaring at him with narrow eyes.

Yohji shrugged. "Go ahead. I'll just go back to sleep after you're gone." He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray he had brought with him.

Omi sighed. "Why don't you just go talk to him?" he asked. "You're miserable, and you're taking us all with you."

"I can't imagine who you're talking about," Yohji said.

"You're a crappy liar," Omi said. "Really."

"I said already. I can't, in good conscience, date a total sociopath," Yohji said. "That leaves him out. Besides, you're the one who seemed to think it was a bad idea, saying you didn't think you could hide it from Kritiker and all that."

Omi felt an enormous headache coming on. "I didn't say it was a bad idea," he said. "I said I didn't think I could hide it from Kritiker. And quite frankly, they know, and they haven't said a word to us yet. You didn't have a problem with the fact that he was a sociopath before he shot Aya. Not that I'm happy that he shot Aya, but at least blame him for the right thing and be honest with yourself about what you're blaming him for."

Yohji lit up a second cigarette. "That's quite a speech for a kid," he said.

Omi snatched the cigarette and tossed it in the sink. "I'm not allowed to have speeches now?"

"Look, kiddo," Yohji said, "it's not that he wasn't a sociopath before. It's just that before we actively clashed, I could pretend that he wasn't. Or at least, I could pretend that it doesn't matter. But keeping this up is stupid. One of these days there'll be a day when I don't want to back down, and we'll have to fight for real. I'd prefer to not die, so maybe dating him is a bad idea."

"You really think he'd kill you?" Omi asked curiously.

"I think he'd have to have a damned good reason," Yohji said. "But if the reason was good enough, yeah, I think he would."

"This is still stupid," Omi said. "You're miserable." He put a plate of food down in front of Yohji and gave him an I-expect-you-to-eat-that look.

Yohji smiled and picked up his chopsticks. "Hey, wouldn't be the first time."

"Unfortunately, I don't think it'll be the last, either," Omi said, but it was in a joking tone of voice.

Yohji just shrugged and prodded at the food. "Look, next time I'm working a morning shift, I'll take it by myself. Will that make up for this time?"

"You don't need to make up for it," Omi said with a sigh. "You just need to not do it again. And say you're sorry to Ken. He's still annoyed because he can't figure out how Schuldig hit him that night."

Yohji shrugged. "He's fast."

"He must be really fast," Omi remarked.

Yohji smirked a little. "No comment."

Omi just shook his head.

^^^^

Schuldig was getting annoyed. Nagi had been in his room for the past four days straight, only coming out for meals and cringing even then. He had a suspicion that Nagi was going to turn into a mushroom soon.

Of course, his mood wasn't being improved by his own behavior. For the past four nights, he had been going out to get drunk and get laid. Though Brad disapproved of the behaviour, he hadn't said a word against it yet. Schuldig was starting to think that Brad was right. It wasn't any fun at all, and the sex was terrible.

"Could you have a word with Nagi?" Brad asked, looking up from his paperwork as Schuldig strolled in that morning. "I don't know why he won't come out, but it's rather ridiculous, and seeing as I scare the hell out of him, I nominate you to talk to him."

Schuldig sighed. "I can try," he said. "But it probably won't do any good."

Brad glanced over at him over the rims of his glasses. "What makes you say that?" he asked.

"Because he's going to hide as long as either of us is in a bad mood," Schuldig said. "And quite frankly, he's petrified of the fact that you're going to get rid of him if he makes the wrong move. Because he's got the self-esteem of a bug."

Brad frowned at this. "I'm not surprised, actually . . . at the Esstet Institute, they often used that as a threat if a student wasn't excelling enough. He was probably told at least a dozen times that he was going to wind up back on the streets where I found him."

Schuldig wilted. "Have you ever bothered to specifically promise him otherwise?"

Brad opened his mouth to answer, then shut it and frowned faintly. "I put it in fairly clear terms," he said. "But I didn't promise, and I suppose given his past, he has every reason to fear even the slightest loophole."

"Look, if I can get him out here, will you clear up that little loophole at dinner?" Schuldig asked.

"I'll do my very best," Brad said dryly.

"If I ever get the chance, I'm going to shoot his teachers," Schuldig informed Brad.

"They don't make the policies," Brad pointed out. "Besides, I came out fine."

"Yeah, but you were an arrogant prig the moment you were born," Schuldig said. "Nagi is too smart and too shy to have people messing with him like that."

"Your loyalty is commendable," Brad said. "Now go do something useful."

Schuldig sighed and went to knock on Nagi's door. There was a very hesitant 'come in', though it was so quiet that Schuldig heard it more mentally than out loud. He pushed open the door and went inside, closing it behind him. Nagi was sprawled out on his bed with a technical manual for his computer. Parts of it were spread out on the floor.

"Does this thing ever spend any time whole?" Schuldig asked, looking at it in amusement. "I kind of feel bad for it. It's like Franken-computer."

Nagi blinked, then said shyly, "But Frankenstein was stronger than most people, wasn't he?"

"Is your computer going to be able to take over the world?" Schuldig asked, sitting on the side of the bed. He didn't miss Nagi's mental flinch, but was rather impressed that there was no physical sign of it.

"By the time I'm done with it," Nagi said, smiling slightly. "But only if I'm there to use it. It's not a separate intelligence yet."

"Yet?" Schuldig asked, but Nagi just smiled enigmatically. "Well, I suppose we all have to have a hobby. World domination is a good one."

Nagi shrugged. "Crawford thinks that having a good computer is important," he said, and turned back to the manual.

"What do you think?" Schuldig asked curiously.

"That if Crawford thinks it's important, it is," Nagi replied.

Schuldig had to admit that Nagi had a point there. He had never seen Brad be wrong yet. "Do you ever get bored of this computer stuff?"

"Not as long as I have new toys," Nagi said.

"So is that why you've been living in here?" Schuldig asked, choosing to approach the topic in a roundabout manner. It didn't help. He could feel Nagi mentally tense; it wasn't something that the boy wanted to talk about.

"I guess," he said, flipping a page in the manual. "Crawford got me a CD burner, so when I hack into other systems, I can lift the information and then put it on hard copy."

"Spiffy," Schuldig said, impressed. He decided that if he was going to get anywhere, he would have to stop beating around the bush. "Do I really scare you that much?"

"No," Nagi said immediately, though he was thinking something quite different.

"And by no, you mean yes?" Schuldig asked dryly.

Nagi smiled weakly. "And by yes I mean please don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you," Schuldig said. "I was when it first happened, but then I sobered up."

"I was only doing what Crawford told me to," Nagi said. "But . . . it wasn't just that. He seemed . . . worried. And it's really hard to tell with him, but I think that if we hadn't gone to get you, something bad would have happened, and I . . . I didn't want anything bad to happen to you." Nagi stopped speaking and looked somewhat surprised that he had said so much.

"I appreciate the concern," Schuldig said. "And even if I was mad at you, you don't need to be afraid of me. For starters, you could grind me into a fine red paste. But still, I wouldn't do anything to you."

"I know," Nagi said. "And I guess I know that Crawford wouldn't either. Can't say the same for Farferello . . ."

"He's getting a little bit less wacky," Schuldig said. "He knows who feeds him."

Nagi laughed a little. "But even knowing that you won't hurt me or Crawford won't throw me out . . . that doesn't mean that . . ." His voice trailed off as he tried to articulate what he was thinking without admitting that he was afraid.

"You'll have a hard time getting over this if you never try," Schuldig pointed out. "You've got to do things like come out of your room."

"Well, I usually do," Nagi pointed out. "Just . . . not this week, because you're all angry about what happened with Yohji-san, and you're angry at Crawford for setting you up, and . . . and he's upset because you keep wandering off to . . . do . . . whatever, and . . . and it's safer to stay in here."

"He's upset?" Schuldig asked. "Pissy I knew, but upset?"

"Well . . . something like that," Nagi mumbled. "I don't pretend to know how Crawford thinks."

"Just do me a favor and don't bolt after dinner," Schuldig said. "We can start with that."

"Okay." Nagi looked down at the manual, then asked rather shame-facedly, "is it all right if I stay in here until dinner? I'd like to finish this up."

Schuldig floofed Nagi's hair. "Whatever floats your boat," he said, and went in search of Brad. The older man didn't appear to have moved an inch from where Schuldig had left him, except that there was an inch less coffee in his mug. "Well, I got him to agree not to run away shrieking immediately after he was finished eating."

"He rarely shrieks," Brad mentioned.

"But if he does, it'd be really loud," Schuldig pondered. "He's got the right sort of voice."

"It is," Brad said, still not looking up.

Schuldig blinked at him, tapping his fingers against the table. He had no idea whether he should dare ask for further clarification. "How do you know that?" he finally asked.

"The first time I met him, he was rather panicky," Brad said.

"And you didn't get squashed into a wall?"

"I didn't, no. All the furniture in the room did, but I didn't."

"Interesting."

"It really is," Brad said, looking up at this. "Even untrained and completely panicking, he showed a remarkable amount of control over his powers."

"I suppose one of us ought to have some natural control, because it sure isn't me," Schuldig said.

"Hm," Brad said. After a few moments of silence, he added, "I'd like you to stay home tonight, if that's . . . compatible with your schedule."

"What do you want me to do?" Schuldig asked.

"Be sober," Brad said dryly. "I think it might be good for you."

"You suck," Schuldig replied. "Fine, I'll stay home. The sex was shit anyway. My entire life is shit. How do I get myself into these situations? Don't answer that."

"By not thinking ahead." Brad answered anyway.

"Nagi said you were worried."

"Nagi is a very astute young man."

"So you care!" Schuldig swooned melodramatically, sprawling onto Brad's shoulder. "At times, with your cold, cold exterior, I really wondered."

"Schuldig. I've known you for five years. As much as I may pretend, I am still a human being, and I'm used to you."

"Does that mean you actually like me?" Schuldig asked.

Brad snorted. "I'm not sure I'd go that far," he said, but underneath the dry sarcasm there was a tiny note of humor.

"Did you take lessons on being a jerk while you were at the Institute?" Schuldig asked.

"Not precisely," Brad said. "But the children did set up their own natural pecking order, and I thought it would be rather important to not be pushed around. I firmly believe that we were monitored during our free time to see who was behaving in what way."

"Well, that's kind of disturbing," Schuldig said. "Do I dare ask where Nagi was?"

"You can ask," Brad said, "but you can't ask me."

Schuldig raised his eyebrows. "Do you not know, or is it just not your business to give away?"

"Nagi's six months at the Institute are in a sealed file. All the files are sealed, actually. If you had gone there, I wouldn't be able to get to yours, either. Whatever information the team leaders get is spoon fed by our superiors. I have almost no idea what happened during those six months."

Schuldig frowned, recalling their conversation from the night he had gotten dragged home from the bar. "Yeah, I totally would have committed suicide if I'd had to go there," he remarked.

Brad gave him an amused glance. "I have more faith in you than that. I think you would have survived just to spite them."

"Okay, maybe," Schuldig conceded. "But what are the options? I'm not cut out to be a leader, but I'm not cut out to take orders, either. So they probably would have just shot me out of hand."

Brad raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes, they probably would have. But you seem to take my orders just fine."

"Because in some twisted way, I actually respect you. I don't know what my problem is."

Brad rolled his eyes. "Maybe because of that time I rescued you from the streets, saved your life, taught you how to shield, and kept you out of the same Institutes we were just discussing?"

"It's a possibility."

^^^^

"Hey," Ken said, poking his head into Omi's room. Omi was sitting on the corner of his bed with his back against the wall, with his knees pulled up to his chest. "You've been up here ever since . . . that whole thing yesterday. You okay?"

Omi gave Ken a look for a few seconds, then shook his head.

"Can I come in?" Ken asked. "I brought you some tea."

Omi nodded, so Ken came the rest of the way in, shutting the door behind him. He settled on the edge of the bed and offered the mug to Omi. He accepted it, but didn't drink any of it. Ken sat in silence for a minute, wondering what to say. He knew that the deaths of the children they had been trying to rescue had bothered Omi a lot more than it had bothered the rest of them, but he didn't know why.

"So, uh," he said, then stopped. He was singularly not used to trying to be comforting. It seemed like a long time since he and Omi had sat down to have a long talk. Maybe not since Yohji had arrived and joined Weiss. "What's wrong?" he asked, deciding to go straight to the heart of the matter.

"I'm . . . remembering things," Omi said.

Ken's eyes widened slightly. "Oh," he said. He thought about this for a minute. "Because of what just happened?" he finally said.

Omi nodded. "I was kidnapped. I didn't remember."

"You wanna talk about it?" Ken asked.

"I don't know," Omi said, still staring into the tea mug.

"Okay," Ken said. He rested his back against the wall next to Omi and put an arm around the smaller boy's shoulders, pulling him into a hug. If talking didn't work, he'd found that hugs were often the next best thing, at least in Omi's case. Omi wilted onto his shoulder, letting himself be hugged.

"I don't remember who my parents are," Omi said, apparently decided that he wanted to talk after all. "But I remembered that they didn't want me."

"Do you remember anything about them?" Ken asked, figuring that if Omi talked aimlessly, he might trigger more of the memories that way.

"I remember that I loved my mother," he said, at length. "She was nice."

"Well, that's good," Ken said encouragingly.

"And when Shota got kidnapped, it was like . . . like it was all happening all over again," Omi said.

Ken nodded. "Yeah, I know the feeling. I tried to forget all about all the stuff that happened with Kase, but when I saw him again, it just came right back to the surface. I guess we never really forget the bad stuff."

"I always thought I wanted to remember," Omi said. "Now I'm not so sure."

Ken was all out of sympathetic words for the day. He gave Omi another hug.

"Why didn't my parents want me?" Omi asked.

"Because they're stupid," Ken replied.

Omi glanced up at him. "Am I a bad person?"

Ken decided that now was not the time to bring up the ethics of moral assassinations. "No, you're not a bad person," he said. "And even if you were, you wouldn't have been when you were a kid. It's your parents that were bad people, for not taking care of you."

Omi sniffled, hiding his face in Ken's shoulder.

"Hey, cheer up," Ken said, unsure of how to react to this. He had never seen Omi cry before in all the time they'd known each other. "You've got us now, right?"

Omi nodded a little. He knew that the comment was supposed to be comforting, and it might be later, and it wasn't Ken's fault that it wasn't now.

"I know it sucks, Omittchi," Ken said, using Yohji's pet name for him. "Believe me, I know how much it hurts to be betrayed by someone you care about. But . . . I guess it does get better after a while, okay?"

Omi nodded again and sniffled, getting back in control of himself. "I was doing okay until I remembered," he said.

Ken smiled a little. "Well, if you didn't remember it, it couldn't really bug you, so that makes sense."

"I hope I don't remember anything else," Omi said quietly.

Ken floofed his hair. "Yeah, I hope you don't either, if it'll make you mope. Now come on, Aya's cooking and you know how cranky he gets if someone tries to avoid one of his meals. He thinks it's an insult to all his ancestors or something."

"Aya could take anything as an insult if he tried hard enough," Omi said, and he stood up to go to dinner.

^^^^

Schuldig knocked on Nagi's door, then poked his head inside before waiting for a reply. "Are you decent?" he asked jokingly, despite the fact that he could clearly see Nagi sitting at his computer, fully clothed.

"Always," Nagi replied, not looking up from the lines of code that were scrolling down his computer. He was typing at a rapid pace. "You're creating a draft. Either come in and shut the door or go away."

Schuldig walked the rest of the way in and shut the door behind him. He leaned over Nagi's shoulder and peered at the computer code. "And you can actually understand all that?" he asked.

"I should hope so," Nagi said. "I wrote it."

"Okay, I'm impressed," Schuldig said, then plopped onto Nagi's bed. "You want to teach me the finer points of Japanese writing later?"

Nagi's lips twitched. "I see that Crawford still hasn't told you where to find any German or English books."

"He's a big jerk," Schuldig agreed. "But we knew that."

"I'll teach you Japanese. After a while, this gives me a headache." Nagi closed the program and turned halfway in his chair, looking at Schuldig expectantly.

"You want a different computer challenge?" Schuldig asked, then frowned slightly and said, "Actually, I don't know if it's a challenge."

"But you don't want to do it yourself?" Nagi surmised.

"It might not be a challenge for you," Schuldig rephrased. "I'm not capable."

"Truer words were never spoken," Nagi replied, his voice carefully neutral.

Schuldig gave him an affronted look. "You're a little twit," he said, and then ruffled Nagi's hair. "Seriously, though. You wanna look up what happened to Crawford's family?"

Nagi blinked at him. "Crawford doesn't know?"

Schuldig shook his head. "Nope."

"Why don't you just look them up yourself?" Nagi asked. "It wouldn't be hard. Try newspaper and stuff like that."

"Because this is Esstet," Schuldig said. "They hide everything they can from us."

Nagi gave him a narrow eyed look. "Can you tell me anything?"

"He was six years old when Esstet picked him up," Schuldig said. "He knew that his parents had gone out to eat and he'd had a vision of a car accident. It was somewhere in America."

Nagi pondered this for a long second, tapping absently at his keyboard. "So basically, you want me to hack into Esstet's mainframe and pull up Crawford's personal data file."

"Essentially, yes."

"All right." Nagi turned back to his computer. "But it might take me a few days, and you're not allowed to pester me to come out of my room until I'm done or I'll lose track of what I'm doing."

"Oh, I suppose that's fair."

Nagi turned to him for a few seconds and gave him a serious look. "Crawford doesn't know that you're asking me to do this, does he."

"No."

"I assume I shouldn't tell him?"

"Probably not."

"All right." Nagi began to type again, pulling up a new program. "By the way, if I get caught, I'm blaming it all on you."

"I knew you had a spine in there somewhere."

Nagi smiled slightly. "I don't want to be in trouble with Esstet. They don't know about my spine, and I'm quite happy with that. One attempt at removal was enough for my lifetime."

"Ah, yes," Schuldig said. "Crawford mentioned the horror of the Institutes once. He didn't tell me much about it, though."

"They aren't very . . . pleasant," Nagi said absently, now typing steadily.

"Did they seriously try to make you spineless?"

It was at this point that Schuldig gained invaluable information: when hacking, Nagi paid very little attention to what was coming out of his mouth. His attention was focused entirely elsewhere. "Of course they did," he said, blinking at his screen and frowning slightly. "The more Talented or smarter kids got to be the leaders, and the rest of us were trodden into the dirt."

Schuldig decided to allow himself one more question. He didn't want to keep pushing for information until Nagi noticed what he was talking about. "How much of the way you act is because of the Institute?"

Nagi shrugged slightly. "I was like that before. They just gave me more reason to stay that way."

Schuldig flopped backwards, staring at the ceiling. "Well, I'm glad that you still have your spine. You're allowed to have one around here. Crawford took you out of the Institute as soon as he could to make sure you'd still have a spine. You know that, don't you?"

"Crawford took me out of the Institute when he did so I'd still have an intact mind," Nagi said. "It had nothing to do with my spine."

Schuldig blinked. "Having a spine is part of being intact."

There was a pause in Nagi's typing and he studied the monitor intently. "I suppose so," he said, and then began typing again.

"He never wanted you to wind up there, you know."

"I know."

"Well, I'll leave you to your hacking," Schuldig said brightly. He poked Nagi in the back. "And I like your spine."

"Thank you," Nagi said absently, his typing speeding up.

Schuldig rolled his eyes and left the room.

^^^^